Andrew Stiles ( Washington Free Beacon )

The only Democratic voters significantly bothered by Joe Bidens race and gender are white liberals with graduate degrees, according to a Pew survey published this week.

According to the poll, a majority of Democratic voters are not concerned that their partys presumptive nominee for president is an elderly white man. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said Bidens age and race do not bother them. Among black voters, 72 percent said they werent bothered by Bidens race and gender, while 70 percent of Hispanic voters said the same.

Concern over Bidens whiteness was considerably higher among white Democrats, nearly half of whom said they were bothered that their partys nominee was not a minority. A majority of liberal Democrats reported being bothered by Bidens whiteness, as did 58 percent of Democrats with a postgraduate education. Among Democrats with a high school education or less, 76 percent said they didnt care about Bidens race or gender, the highest result among any of the demographics measured.

Pew even broke down the numbers by which candidate each voter supported in the early stages of the Democratic primary. The results were not surprising. Early Biden supporters were the least likely to care about the former vice presidents race and gender, while 73 percent of Elizabeth Warren supporters were bothered by the fact that the likely Democratic nominee was not at least going to be an elderly white woman.

Warren was one of the first Democratic primary candidates to use the term Latinx on the campaign trail. The non-gendered alternative to Latino and Latina is most popular among white liberals with graduate degrees and left-wing activists. A 2019pollof Hispanic voters found that just 2 percent prefer the politically correct Latinx, while 68 percent said they preferred Latino/Latina or Hispanic.

Biden will be the Democratic Partys first white male nominee since John Kerry in 2004 and the first Democratic nominee without an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale in 1984.

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POLL: White Liberals Most Bothered by Joe Biden's Whiteness - The Jewish Voice

When elections stop giving the results you want, why not turn to fascism? In 2014, the Indian electorate rose in revolt against the old elite. In 2019, they looked the elite in the eye and screamed out their verdict with even greater force.

How do you get back at common people who refuse to vote your way? You find the weakest, most vulnerable and you go after them. Its the liberal way.

So there are millions of common Indians working in the Gulf. Those are theocratic countries ruled by religious law. Many apply the death penalty for blasphemy, for apostasy, for homosexuality and so on.

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But Indians being Indians, they carry within themselves a bit of the democratic spirit wherever they go. A spark of the open minded, free society where they come from. They are used to speaking their mind. Sometimes they forget where they are and commit crimes of speech and thought. It was only a matter of time before Indian liberals realized these people were vulnerable and decided to go after them.

Right now, the Indian liberal corner of social media is on a dangerous power trip. They are scanning the online footprint of common Indians who work in the Middle East, flagging any sign of disobedience to ultra conservative religion. They have become the online eyes and ears of the religious police, which then picks up these hapless victims for prosecution under conservative religious law.

In trying to smear India, liberals had so far used some pretenses, spreading their message to America, Europe, Canada, Australia and the like. In doing so, they could hold up the fig leaf that these are all free societies. They could hide behind noble ideals such as human rights, liberty and free expression.

Not any more. Liberals have crossed the big red line and approached theocratic regimes in the Middle East. The other day, Communist trolls gleefully handed over to prosecution a man who had dared to say that the gleaming skyscrapers of the Middle East were built by the sweat of Indian workers.

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The irony is think on that one. Communists on the side of the king and not the worker. By the way, the workers strike, the most sacred of all Communist rituals, is illegal in the Middle East.

What do you make of it when prominent journalists, who publish in mainstream outlets, say openly that Indias internal matters are not internal any more? Instead they are trying to get foreign Islamic governments involved in our affairs. Where does this stop? Now they are approaching theocratic Islamic states to interfere in our politics.

Well, Pakistan is an Islamic state. Will Indian liberals approach them as well for support? Have they already done so? Who is next in line to be approached by Indian liberals against the Indian government? China? North Korea? Territories controlled by ISIS or Taliban or Al-Shabab?

By reaching out to Islamic countries, liberals have dropped all pretense that this is about human rights or free expression. This is now about religion. And tapping into transnational loyalties to impose their will on common Indians.

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Imagine this scenario. An Indian in a Middle Eastern theocracy comes home after a hard day at work and pulls out a chilled beer. The next moment, there is a loud banging on the door. The religious police is here. They have been alerted by Indian liberals who noticed the photo he had casually posted on Facebook. Caught with alcohol, he now faces an uncertain and brutal future. Years or even decades in jail, mutilation, possibly even death.

Tomorrow, these online liberal vigilantes could report an Indian to thIslamists e religious police for being gay. Or perhaps an Indian Muslim, who decides to leave the religion or convert to a different religion. Or perhaps even a single woman, who posted pictures of herself taking a casual walk without a male guardian.

At the moment, Indian liberals have started out with reporting thought and speech crimes of a political nature to the religious police. This can only get more intrusive. Online vigilantes will soon prey on anyone who breaks any rules of ultra conservative orthodoxy.

Life isnt fair. Despite all our outrage over the hypocrisy of Indian liberalism, we have to accept the bitter reality that they win this round. We know that these theocratic countries arent likely to change their ways. Theres no use going against their customs, whether knowingly or otherwise.

So, it is up to Indians working in such places to police themselves and observe extreme caution. They have to give up the freedom to express themselves in thought, speech, sexuality, everything.

For people who are used to liberty, this is not an easy transition. But this is the price we must pay for incorporating undemocratic regimes into the global supply chain. A bit like China. Think of existence in a theocratic Middle Eastern country as a permanent state of mental lockdown.

Depressing, but true.

If it is any comfort, understand that the power of these theocratic regimes is transient. And soon to be done to dust. Why?

Quite simply, because the world will pass them by. Right now, they have a single resource and they live off those lottery winnings.

But think about it. They must have had that resource for thousands of years. It didnt bring them any prosperity. Until human knowledge advanced to the point that we figured out how to use that resource. And just like that, human knowledge will move past them, discovering newer and better resources.

These theocratic regimes have not used their windfall gains to invest in the knowledge economy. And sooner or later, nations that do not produce new knowledge will be left nowhere. In the long game, the open mind, which welcomes knowledge, will always win over the closed mind.

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Indian liberals joining hands with theocratic regimes is a terrifying development for India - OpIndia

Bella Thorne is looking for a third for a relationship liberal on his Instagram | INSTAGRAM

He is very curious as Bella Thorne, the former star of Disney has earned a new reputation with his bold decisions.

Follow us on our Facebook and get more to Show!

The famous already has her fianc, but she already had a love triangle, then this 14 February, she decided to find a third party to a relationship super bold this day of love.

The famous young friends shared a few days before the incredible surprises that had been given for Valentines day. Her boyfriend, Benjamin Mascolo, love Bella Thorne with all of its details and its follies, so it seems that she has accepted a proposal super indecent.

You may also be interested: Yuya has experienced something paranormal in his house and has shared it on his YouTube channel

While Bella was throwing a question super bold on his Instagram: Escape together, we will be back soon. Happy Valentines Day! Who wants to be our third party? Lovely, their millions of fans who have not lost time to sign up to the proposal, but Bella has no choice.

The photograph has managed to get more than 750,000 likes with what seems a lot are in agreement with the decision or at least they liked the picture, because in it they leave a very much in love and a little tender.

Also read: Demi Rose without clothes and with a towel on the head supplied to its fans Instagram

It must be remembered that recently, we have been able to see Bella with Ava Caceres, a singer, an australian, to save what is one of the videos the hottest that are output by 2020.However, what has attracted most attention, it is a special scene, in which it seems to flirt and eventually get too close, to the point of giving a passionate kiss.

Bella took the opportunity to help her friend to promote her song, so she decided to share a fragment with his 22 million followers on Instagram, more precisely at the time when they appear to be kissing each other passionately, causing the continuation of social networks.

.

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Bella Thorne is looking for a third for a relationship liberal on his Instagram - D1SoftballNews.com

Stressful times bring out everyones fundamental principles. Those favoring liberty tend to go in that direction. Those favoring the oppositecontroltend to go further towards a control mentality. This is just a manifestation of the contrast between the political Right and the political Left:

The Right prefers liberty over control.The Left prefers control over liberty.

We are now seeing this in how the left has reacted to the Chi-Com virus pandemic with a tendency towards asserting more and more control over the people while the right is resisting this authoritarianism. Even more incredible is their reaction to this movement, given their pass pretense of being liberal.

The national socialist left has a knee jerk reaction to anything favored by President Trump. They automatically hate it, with ever-changing positions depending on what he has advocated. Thus, weve seen them come out against an existing drug that showed great promise in treating COVID-19.

Their newfound resistance to the cause of liberty was overwhelmingly energized when he tweeted that we need to LIBERATE MINNESOTA!, LIBERATE MICHIGAN! and LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

However, its not that they are merely coming out in opposition of freedom because of president Trump. They are revealing their long-held beliefs, despite their false labeling as liberal.

Our first and probably most egregious example hails from the Washington Post with an investigation of how pro-liberty groups [or as they term them pro-gun provocateurs] actually had the temerity to come out against the heavy-handed approach of some governors in their suppression of individual liberty:

The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called Minnesota Gun Rights, and his siblings, Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had roughly 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should liberate their states.

The Dorr brothers manage a slew of pro-gun groups across a wide range of states, from Iowa to Minnesota to New York, and seek primarily to discredit organizations like the National Rifle Association as being too compromising on gun safety. Minnesota Gun Rights, for instance, describes itself as the states no-compromise gun rights organization.

It wasnt long before the many who claim to be liberal decided that even talking about such things are to be verboten.

Even worse, the national socialist media suddenly decided that liberate means a call to arms:

Does that mean that we shouldnt be allowed to use the words liberty and liberal for the same reason?

Weve saved the most egregious example for last. This one is steeped in hypocrisy given that The Washington Democracy Dies in Darkness Post would be the first to the barricades if their favorite part of the Bill of Rights and the 1st amendment were threatened.

But when it comes to other peoples essential human rights, any crisis is a good crisis for the suppression of those rights. Not to mention the numerous times theyve called for gun confiscation or the changing of the Constitution because they have no use for other peoples liberty or their common sense human rights.

Would they have the same attitude if the government suppressed their essential human rights?

The authoritarian left has always had to rely on deception and lies in order to survive. Their base ideology is predicated on attaining power over everyone else, but they cannot be truthful about this fact of life.

The left has always needed to use false labeling to remain viable, from lauding themselves as being liberal to pushing ancient ideas under the guise of being progressive or being democratic while ignoring what the people truly want.

If anything, we are seeing the authoritarian left for what they truly are: Obsessed with control of every aspect of society. The people were willing to accommodate their petty wishes for a little while, but that time is up. They want their liberty back.

Check out the future home of the NOQ Report Podcast.

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Leftists used to fake being liberal and champions of liberty. Now they openly oppose it. - NOQ Report

Madison in the sixties, early April the only liberal elected mayor.

The mayoral election of 1965 is polite but partisan and gives the city a clear choice between continuity and change: Conservative businessman George Hall, who ran the successful mayoral campaigns in 1961 and 63 for conservative businessman Henry Reynolds, and Dane County clerk Otto Festge, a Democrat from Cross Plains.

Hall, sixty-four, is chairman of the Hyland Hall construction company and H & H Electric, and president of the board of directors of Madison General Hospital. Festge, forty-four, is a former part-time farmer who began his career in public service as Cross Plains town assessor in 1946 and has been county clerk since 1953; hes also a talented multi-instrumentalist who played with the Madison Symphony Orchestra when he was at the UW, and was later a public school music teacher in Black Earth.

The nonpartisan election has a strongly partisan tone. Festge, elected county clerk six times as a Democrat, features a photograph of himself with US Senator Gaylord Nelson in his campaign literature. Numerous Republican officials are among the 150 at Halls campaign kickoff at the Loraine Hotel. [i]All of the construction trade unions support Hall; municipal employees go for Festge. The Federation of Labors Committee on Political Education endorses both.[ii]

Halls top priority is an expressway from Blair Street through Law Park to connect to the Monona Causeway, finally nearing completion. So hes very much against building a civic auditorium there, where Frank Lloyd Wright wanted Monona Terrace to be. Hall wants a new site, close to the Capitol, to be designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation. Festge favors the Law Park site, but would support a different site if demanded by the public or recommended by the planners. The strongest support for a Monona Terrace auditorium comes from Republican attorney William Dyke, who finished third in the seven-man primary.[iii]

The candidates differ on open housing. Hall supports the current ordinance, which only covers forty percent of the housing units. Festge wants to eliminate the current exemptions and expand the law to all units.[iv]

Former assessor Festge focuses on financial issues, warning of the citys increasing debt and vowing to restore Madisons AAA bond rating, reduced to AA under Reynolds in 1963.[v]

Hall calls for a joint City-County Health Department and wants to consolidate the villages of Monona and Shorewood Hills into Madison. A member of the board of the Vocational, Technical and Adult schools, Hall wants Central High School closed and its building turned over to his system.[vi]

Both candidates support buying forty-acres at Milwaukee Street and Highway 51 for a full general hospital, and [vii] each supports the police policy of taking photographs at political demonstrations.

Theres little doubt about the outcome. Four years of Republican rule is enough for Madison. Festge carries nineteen of twenty-two wards on his way to a landslide twenty-point victory, about 25,000 to 17,000.[viii] A year into the Great Society, Madison has its first Democratic mayor since the first month of the Kennedy Administration.

Festge lays out an ambitious agenda in his inaugural message: settle the longstanding dispute with the Wright Foundation over fees and start a new auditorium process, buy land for the east side hospital, expand mass transit, improve relations with the university, and more.

But two years later, taxes and crime are both up, college students are starting to cause trouble, and the building trades are on strike. After winning by eight thousand votes in 1965, election night 1967 finds Festge ahead by only about thirty votes with just one precinct left to report.

The 46-yo- Festge almost got to run unopposed, but attorney and former broadcast personality William Dyke, who finished third in the seven-way primary in 1965, enters the race just hours before the filing deadline.[ix] A former aide to Republican lieutenant governor Jack Olson, Dyke enjoys active support of local and state GOP officials, while the Dane County Democratic Party doesnt even endorse Festge, even though he had been elected county clerk six times as a Democrat.

Dyke, thirty-five, campaigns almost exclusively on Festges spending, taxes, and purported failures of leadership, and avoids culture and crime.[x] And he proposes organizing a group of experts to advise UW graduates with advanced high-tech degrees how to create, finance and market new products.[xi]

Festge cites as his primary accomplishment the recent acquisition of a site on Milwaukee Street for the long-sought east side hospital, making progress on the Monona Basin auditorium and civic center and helping form the Alliance of Cities to lobby for more state shared revenue. And he notes that most of the tax hike has been for the schools, not city services.[xii]

Festge runs moderately well throughout the city; Dyke wins fewer wards but by larger margins, especially his Nakoma neighborhood. It all comes down to a final ward in University Heights. About 10 p.m., the last numbers come in, and Festge gets his second term by just sixty-two votes out of 35,000 cast. [xiii]

Chastened by his political near-death experience and sensing the brewing tax revolt, Festge vows to keep the tax rate at forty-seven dollars per thousand dollars of assessment. I believe we can provide for our needs through the normal increase in the citys valuation, he tells the council in his inaugural message. Its a statement he will soon regret.[xiv]

Festge proposes a land bank for industrial uses, and a new transportation commission. And he wants the council to create an advisory committee on housing and social services, to plan community services for the citys growing number of poor and elderly.

Having made more progress on the auditorium/civic center in two years than predecessor Reynolds had made in two terms, Festge also swipes at the small obstructionist minority doing a grave disservice to our city by continuing to fight the project, and says they deserve forthright condemnation.[xv]

Festge closes his inaugural message by calling the narrowness of his victory a challenge to me, my administration, and to this Common Council.[xvi]

He has no idea of the challenges to come.

And thats this weeks Madison in the Sixties. For your award winning, hand-washing, social distancing, WORT News team, Im Stu Levitan.

[i] Dane GOP Chairman Is Helping Campaign of Hall for Mayor, CT, January 14, 1965; Doyle Cites Festges Work as Important Background, CT, March 29, 1965.

[ii] 11 City Labor Leaders Support Hall for Mayor, WSJ, January 17, 1965; Witt, COPE Endorses Hall, Festge, WSJ, February 19, 1965; Coyle, Terrace Dominates COPE Candidate Forum, CT, February 19, 1965; editorial, How Long Will Madison Let Ald. Rohr Dictate Its Politics, CT, February 19, 1965; Brautigam, COPE Continues Dual OK for Festge, Hall, CT, March 23, 1965.

[iii] Coyle, Dyke Indicates Favor for Monona Terrace, CT, January 21, 1965; Hall Ends Silence, Raps Terrace Auditorium Site, CT, February 8, 1965; editorial, Festges Stuck with Terrace, WSJ, February 23, 1965; Coyle, Hall Favors Expressway through Site of Terrace, CT, March 13, 1965; Brautigam, Major Rivals Say That Terrace Site Is Principle[Principal?] yes Issue, CT, March 17, 1965.

[iv] Witt, Mayor Candidates Oppose Skywalks, WSJ, March 26, 1965; Brautigam, Metropolitan Problems Take Spotlight at Forum, CT, March 30; Coyle, Auditorium, Road Plan Pace Candidates Jabs, CT, April 1, 1965.

[v]; Festge Pledges Himself to City Beautification Program, CT, April 1, 1965.

[vi] Hall Says City, County Health Agency Needed, WSJ, March 29, 1965.

[vii] Hall Stresses Planning for New City Hospital, WSJ, March 14, 1965; Festge Presses Action on East Side Hospital, WSJ, March 28, 1965.

[viii] Aehl, Festge Wins Mayor Race by 8,000 Votes, WSJ, April 7, 1965; Coyle, Festge in Landslide Win, CT, April 7, 1965.

[ix] Dyke Beats Deadline, Files To Oppose Festge, WSJ, February 1, 1967.

[x] Fiscal Restraint Proposed by Dyke, WSJ, March 8, 1967; Aehl, Mayoral Race Based on Leadership, Taxed, WSJ, April 2, 1967.

[xi] County GOP Backs Dyke for Mayor, CT, March 31, 1967; Moucha,Dyke Plea Fails, COPE OKs Festge, WSJ, February 17, 1967.

[xii] Coyle, Festge vs. Dyke: Are There Any Issues? CT, February 25, 1967; Aehl, Dyke, Festge Attack, Defend, WSJ, March 11, 1967

[xiii] Aehl, Festge Barely Wins by 75-Vote Margin, WSJ, April 5, 1967; Coyle, Festges Win Is Affirmed, CT, April 15, 1967.

[xiv] Coyle, Mayor Vows Effort To Hold Tax Line, CT, April 18, 1967.

[xv] Coyle, Forster, Smith Off Auditorium Group, CT, April 18, 1967.

[xvi] Otto Festge, Mayors Annual Message, April 18, 1967, WI-M 1 MAY 50.1:1967/4/18, Wisconsin Historical Society Library [Will it be clear to readers where this source can be found?]. Yes

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Madison in the Sixties - the only liberal elected mayor - Wortfm

U.S. Army Specialist Daulton Radler inspects his glove fit and is shown the proper procedures for donning personal protective equipment while awaiting to forward deploy to the coronavirus testing site in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. April 2, 2020. (Master Sergeant George Roach/Pennsylvania National Guard/Handout via Reuters)Media figures on both sides of the aisle failed to appreciate the extent of the threat until it was too late. Liberals shouldnt pretend otherwise.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed virtually everything about American life, with one prominent exception: While business, the arts, and sports are all on hold, the hyper-partisan political warfare that afflicts our public square has continued at the same pace and intensity as before.

As the present crisis has developed over the past few weeks, the chattering classes have kept busy interpreting everything that happens through pro-Trump and anti-Trump prisms. Many in the mainstream liberal media are intent on settling scores with Trumps cheerleaders in the conservative media, whom they have accused of fueling skepticism about the danger posed by the coronavirus. Yet in doing so, they are ignoring the fact that many on the left were just as confused about the pandemic at its start and just as eager to play politics with it as their favorite villains on the right.

A front-page story in the New York Times this week summed up the liberal indictment of the right. Focusing heavily on Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and right-wing talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, the piece took as its conceit that they had not merely gotten the story wrong but had badly misled their audience and helped encourage the most prominent consumer of conservative media President Trump to delay implementing measures to stem the pandemics spread.

Theres no denying that many conservatives were slow to realize the danger posed by the coronavirus, and stuck to talking points about its being no worse than the flu right up until the point in mid-March when it became apparent that we were facing a full-blown public-health disaster. Their knee-jerk reaction to the first calls for action on the issue from the White House was to assume Trump was covering his political bases rather than attempting to forestall a real emergency. And many of them saw panic over the virus as a liberal plot to establish a Hurricane Katrina-style narrative in which Trump would be declared to have been derelict in his duty.

As Times reporter Jeremy Peters details, Hannity, Limbaugh, and other conservative-media figures such as Candace Owens and Dennis Prager made statements in February comparing coronavirus to the regular flu and predicting its spread should not be a cause for alarm. Peters is also right to point out that, like Trump, many on the right turned on a dime in mid March, beginning to take the threat of the virus seriously.

But the underlying assumption of Peterss thesis is that conservatives were alone in making these errors, and that assumption doesnt hold up. Liberal media outlets, very much including the Times, were also slow to recognize the impending catastrophe. And at the earliest stage of the story, when the Right and the Left dueled over Chinas responsibility for the pandemic, liberals instinctive desire to disagree with Trump on everything led many of them to downplay the threat in a different but no-less-dangerous way than the Hannitys and Limbaughs of the world.

Peters notes that although some at Fox News mocked the idea of being afraid of the virus, others such as Tucker Carlson were touting the coronavirus as a threat in late January, specifically as justification for Trumps order limiting flights from China. While Carlson and a guest, Senator Tom Cotton (R. Ark.), were, according to the Times, merely spouting talking points to justify a prejudiced decision aimed at focusing hate on a foreign enemy, their counterparts on the left were taking the bait and downplaying the threat of the virus.

On February 5, the Times published an op-ed by global-tourism reporter Rosie Spinks under the headline, Who Says Its Not Safe to Travel to China? The article, an argument against Trumps restrictions on flights from China, took the point of view that the real problem with the virus was that it was promoting hate against Chinese people and hurting the travel industry.

The same intellectual reflex motivated politicians such as New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, to spend February and part of March dismissing the pandemic. They urged New Yorkers to disregard any fears about the virus and attend the Chinese New Year celebrations and parade in New Yorks Chinatown. House speaker Nancy Pelosi did the same thing while promoting the Chinese New Year festivities held in her native San Franciscos Chinatown. In retrospect, such advocacy is hard to defend given the likelihood that the virus was already starting to spread. But at the time, the looming danger wasnt yet clear, so the political needs of the moment took precedence.

Meanwhile, on January 31, the Washington Post published an op-ed by former Harvard professor David Ropeik that sought to dismiss fears about the impending pandemic as a figment of our collective imagination, mocking the notion of a global health emergency. A few days, later the Post ran another opinion piece by a pair of academics under the headline Why we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus, which claimed fears about the pandemic were merely an invitation to harsh measures that would scapegoat marginalized populations.

Peters can point to instances throughout the following weeks in which Fox News personalities, Limbaugh, and others on the right pooh-poohed the coronavirus as no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, highlighted those who survived the disease, and accused the media of trying to perpetuate a hoax against Trump. But a detailed look at what the Times published in its opinion pages during the same period shows that neither its editorial board nor its roster of 16 regular columnists were sounding the alarm while some conservatives encouraged Americans to ignore the danger.

The first mention of the virus in the Times opinion section came commendably early, on January 29, and seemed to warn of what was to come. But even then, the papers editorial board praised the Trump administrations foresight and offered reason for cautious optimism:

To its credit, the administration has managed to keep some of the worlds leading infectious disease experts in key roles at top agencies, including the C.D.C., the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. If those professionals are given the resources and authority to respond to the crisis as their experience and the science dictate . . . the worst-case scenarios may yet be averted.

Though Peterss article complains that right-wing pundits remained insufficiently alarmed about the virus throughout February, the Times didnt seem too concerned about it either: After January 29, its editorial board didnt mention it again for a full month. When it picked up the issue again on February 29, in an editorial entitled, Here Comes the Coronavirus Pandemic, it expressed mild concern about Trumps belief that the situation was well under control, but, like many conservative-media outlets, hedged bets about what would happen next. There is still a chance that COVID-19 will be more fire drill than actual fire, the Timess editors wrote. The vortex of fear and market-tumbling anxiety may yet pass.

The Timess op-ed columnists did no better than its editorial board. The first Times op-ed column on the issue was even more dismissive of the pandemic than anything being said on Fox News. On January 29, Farhood Manjoos Beware the Pandemic Panic argued that alarm about the virus was unwarranted. Citing false assurances from the World Health Organization, Manjoo said the real concern was not the illness itself but the amped-up, ill-considered way our frightened world might respond to it.

Like many on the right whom Peters singles out, Manjoo compared the virus to the flu and other diseases that didnt pose such a catastrophic danger to American society. He claimed that, fear of a vague and terrifying new illness might spiral into panic, and that it might be used to justify unnecessarily severe limits on movement and on civil liberties, especially of racial and religious minorities around the world. . . . We should keep this sense of caution in mind in case American politicians begin pushing for travel bans, overbroad quarantines or other measures that might not be supported by the science.

To his credit, Manjoo eventually walked this back in a column published on Feb. 26. But the qualifying excuses he offered with mea culpa could just as easily be used to justify similar mistakes made by right-wingers:

To be totally fair to myself, my reasoningin that columnwas mostly on point: At the time, the new coronavirus appeared to be a far less worrisome danger than the flu, which killshundreds of thousandsof people around the world annually. The illness, since named Covid-19, had then killed fewer than 200 people, and the Chinese governments late but immense efforts to contain it looked as if they might work.

Manjoo at least had something to say about the virus early on, however wrong it turned out to be. The other 15 op-ed columnists employed by the paper that would subsequently excoriate conservatives for their lack of early alarm remained completely silent until almost the end of February. After January 29, the virus wasnt mentioned in the Timess opinion pages until February 26, when Gail Collins chose to attack the Trump administration for its lack of urgency in dealing with the problem.

And even at that late date some of the Timess influencers were still considering the possibility that the pandemic would blow over soon. On February 29, Nicholas Kristof wrote that, Nobody knows if the coronavirus will be a big one, for it may still fizzle. As of this writing, onlyone personis known to have died from it in the United States, while thousands routinely die annually from the seasonal flu. But increasingly, experts are saying that we should get ready just in case. In the following weeks, Kristof, too, would excoriate conservatives such as Limbaugh for expressing similar skepticism.

The bottom line is that the Times didnt get consistently interested in the coronavirus until the full extent of the crisis became apparent in March, at which point its writers believed theyd found a stick with which to beat the president and his supporters. While this does not excuse the mistakes made by conservatives and the administration in the critical months before the crisis hit, it does validate right-wingers beliefs that Trumps opponents were, like the president, reacting to the pandemic primarily as a political controversy rather than a public-health threat in those months.

Predictions are a perilous business for any pundit, and much of what both liberals and conservatives published and broadcast about the coronavirus in the weeks leading up to the middle of March turned out to be wrong. Both sides made these mistakes not out of a willful desire to mislead but because they knew little about the subject, much of what they did know was wrong, and they were, as is their deeply ingrained habit, apt to interpret the latest developments as confirmation of their preexisting political biases. Neither side should now attempt to rewrite history so it casts all the blame for those early failures on the other.

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Conservative Pundits Werent the Only Ones to Get the Pandemic Wrong - National Review

Liberal groups have dropped more than $20 million into advertisements attacking President Donald Trump and Republicans on coronavirus, a sign that the pandemic will play a central role in November's presidential election.

Democrats have used the outbreak in recent weeks to campaign in battleground states that could determine the presidential election, includingPennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Liberal advocacy groups and super PACs are airing ads slamming the president as slow in responding to the pandemic.

The multimillion-dollar efforts are fueled by groups bankrolled by some of the party's top donors, including billionaires Donald Sussman and George Soros.Protect Our Care, a dark money group established toprotect the Affordable Care Act, is the latest to attack Trump's response to the outbreak. The group putfive figuresinto television and digital ad buys late last week in battleground states. The ads will continue to run throughout this week.

Protect Our Care is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund at Arabella Advisors, a dark money network that funneled more than a half-billion in secret cash from wealthy donors to liberal initiatives in 2018. Dozens of advocacy groups fall under the Sixteen Thirty Fund's umbrella, which provides its legal and tax-exempt status to groups that are not recognized as nonprofits by the IRS. Protect Our Care also set up a "Coronavirus War Room" Twitter account to counter Trump's response. The group did not respond to requests for comment.

While Protect Our Care attacks Trump over the pandemic, Tax March, another Sixteen Thirty Fund project, has targeted GOP lawmakers. The group poured $1.2 millioninto media buys against Republican senators David Perdue (Ga.), Susan Collins (Maine), Pat Toomey (Pa.), and Ron Johnson (Wis.) over their support for the 2017 tax bill that contained relief for some corporations that may benefit from the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus.

Liberal super PACs have also spent millions attacking Trump. PACRONYM, a super PAC tied to the dark money nonprofit ACRONYM, has spent at least $5 million on coronavirus ads against the president. Tara McGowan, the group's founder, said it's up to Democratic groups to push anti-Trump messaging during the pandemic while presidential candidates remain positive. PACRONYM received $1 million from Sussman and $250,000 from Soros's Democracy PAC late last year.

Establishment players such as Priorities USA, the largest outside Democratic super PAC, have been some of the biggest spenders to date. Priorities has already poured more than $7.5 million hitting Trump over the coronavirus in pivotal battleground states. Fueled by $8 million from Sussman and $5 million from Soros this cycle, the group began running ads in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in March.

"Trump's response to the crisis has been nothing short of a failure," the group said in a press release announcing its initial coronavirus ads. "He continues to lie constantly and fail to act in the best interest of the country. It is imperative that voters know the truth about Trump's failures so they can continue to hold their government accountable in this time of crisis."

Priorities plans to spend at least $150 million leading up to the November elections.

American Bridge PAC, led by liberal operative David Brock, has spent $6.3 million on coronavirus media buys. The PAC has received $2 million in funding from Soros this year. Individuals with ties to the Democracy Alliance, a millionaire and billionaire donor club cofounded by Soros that helps set the progressive agenda, have also provided large donations to the group. The alliance mapped out a $275 million spending plan for the 2020 elections.

American Bridge recently announced that it is joining forces with Unite the Country PAC, the super PAC backing Joe Biden's candidacy. The groups hope to raise a combined $175 million as they collaborate on research, polling, and ad buys against Trump.

Unite the Country has already spent seven figures on coronavirus-related attack ads against Trump. The pro-Biden PAC's biggest donoris Silicon Valley billionaire and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who has stepped up as a major Democratic funder in recent years. Unite the Country's founders also separately established Future Majority, a D.C.-based dark money "strategy center" that plans to spend at least $60 million in the Midwest.

As outside liberal groups pour tens of millions of dollars into attack ads against Trump, outside Republican groups have been relatively absent from the airwaves.

America First, the super PAC supporting Trump's reelection, recently announced a $10 million ad buy in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin after allegedly facing frustration from White House personnel and Trump's campaign aides over the group's inactivity.

Joe Schoffstall is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Previously, he spent three years with the Media Research Center and was most recently with the Capitol City Project. He can be reached at Schoffstall@freebeacon.com. His Twitter handle is @JoeSchoffstall.

Continued here:

Liberal Groups Spend More Than $20 Million Attacking Trump, GOP on Coronavirus - Washington Free Beacon

Star Trekand the Liberal Utopian Dream

When Gene Roddenberry first pitched Star Trek to NBC, he framed it as an epic voyage of rugged space pioneers akin to the westerns that then dominated the airwaves. What we got over the next three years was a deep exploration of two separate but linked phenomena: modern liberal politics and utopian technologies. By the former I don't mean what now passes for liberalism. Instead, it was a more robust sense of a future where, at least within the boundaries of the Federation, material need was largely overcome, people worked for pride or glory instead of money, and racism had disappeared from human cultures.

Android Face by bluebudgie (Pixabay License / Pixabay)

It was an uneasy balance of freedom and equality with a strong sense of individual human rights. Sure, Ensign Stiles (Paul Comi) might distrust the Romulans (and by extension the similar-looking Vulcans) in "Balance of Terror" (episode 1.14), but Captain Kirk (William Shatner) was quick to remind him that there was no room for bigotry on his bridge. There were hints that the Federation might even be a socialist paradise, though this was never entirely clear.

Yes, most of the female Star Fleet characters were secondary, but we should remember on Kirk's bridge there was a black woman (Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura -- a first on network TV), an alien (Leonard Nimoy's Spock), a Japanese-American (George Takei's Hikaru Sulu), and later a Russian (Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov). And there were a number of "strong female characters" as guest stars, right from the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", with Sally Kellerman playing Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a heroic psychiatrist who saves the day.

William Shatner as James Kirk in Star Trek 1969 CBS Photo Archive/ IMDB)

Further, Star Trek doled out its liberal medicine in the candy-coated form of allegory: whether of the futility of racism (3.15 "Let That be Your Last Battlefield"), of the Vietnam War as part of a balance of power (2.19 "A Private Little War"), or of the dangers of letting computers make decisions for us (2.24 "The Ultimate Computer"). Most of these allegories with the notable exception of Roddenberry's own ham-fisted "The Omega Glory" could be swallowed without too much narrative pain, and without knowing the links to real political situations they hinted at.

Roddenberry's The Next Generation continued, for the most part, this utopian liberalism, featuring episodes where Cmdr. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) falls in love with Melinda Culea's Soren, a gender-fluid alien (5.17 "The Outcast"), where the crew faces peril on a planet ruled by women (1.14 "Angel One"), and where Cmdr. Data's (Brent Spiner) rights as an artificial person were defended ably by none other than Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard (2.9 "The Measure of a Man"). It was truly a "dignity culture", using sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning's categorization of how we react to personal offense (the others being honour and victim cultures).

If anything, Picard was too much of a stickler when defending the prime directive: unlike Kirk, he rarely tried to impose liberal values at the point of a phaser. For instance, it's hard to imagine him destroying the war-simulation computers that locked the planet Eminiar VII in a never-ending war with planet Vendikar as Kirk did in 1.23 "A Taste of Armageddon": Picard would have talked his way of out this one.

The foundation of Star Trek's liberal utopia was what I'll call utopian technology that allowed inter-planetary travel (warp drive), protection against alien threats (shields and phasers), and easy travel to a planet's surface and to other ships (the transporter). Next Generation added the choice of a wide variety of food, drink, and material objects (the replicator) along with unlimited leisure possibilities (the holodeck). Apparently no one abused their replicator privileges and went on drinking binges with endless pints of Romulan ale or, with the partial exception of Dwight Schultz's Lt. Barclay, became addicted to the sexual and power fantasies made possible by the holodeck. They had better things to do.

Science fiction stories offer five distinct levels of technology: primitive (that which we've long ago surpassed), contemporary, advanced (things we can realistically envision but don't have quite yet), utopian (things that make sense within a canon but we don't have any idea how to create), and magical (things that may seem "cool" on the surface but make no scientific sense). Our journey is one from Star Trek's utopian technology in the 1960s to a mixture of utopian and advanced technologies at the end of the millennium, finally to an embrace of magical technologies in the last decade, with notable exceptions. This journey parallels the decline and fall of inclusive liberal utopianism as we move from Kirk's Enterprise to Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and Michael Burnham's (Sonequa Martin-Green) Star Trek: Discovery. The technology and liberalism of recent series such as Discovery, Picard, and Doctor Who have more in common with Harry Potter's childish wand-waving than Roddenberry's original techno-utopian dream.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Armin Shimerman plays two Ferengi roles in "The Last Outpost" (IMDB)

Star Trek itself started to push back against its own utopianism starting in 1987, though more as parody than serious critique. In 1.5 "The Last Outpost" we meet the Ferengi, who Riker characterizes as "Yankee traders". At first portrayed as aggressive and greedy aliens, by the time of Deep Space Nine they became a parody of capitalism, especially whenever Quark (Armin Shimerman) quoted the hilarious Rules of Acquisition that could be all boiled down to one mantra: greed is good. Still, in this and others episodes Next Generation amped up the sense of cultural relativism, in keeping with the times. Not all alien species shared the Federation's post-capitalist egalitarianism. To drive this point home, the Ferengi were shocked that human women were allowed to wear clothes.

But Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager presented two more serious challenges to the original series' techno-utopianism. The first came from the Borg Collective, whose admittedly amazing technologies came at the expense of erasing any sense of individuality in the races they assimilated. In 2.16 "Q Who" and more dramatically in "The Best of Both Worlds" (3.26 and 4.1, 1989), we meet a species that absorbs not only the culture and knowledge of all races they come into contact with, but for whom individual rights are meaningless. Their members were little more than nodes on a vast digital network whose sole purpose is control. Their technological superiority to the Federation challenges the assumption that liberal societies produce the most sophisticated science.

The second challenge came from the Klingons 2.0, as re-envisaged by Next Generation. As I've said elsewhere, they were no longer loose analogues of Soviet-era Russians. Instead, they were space-faring Homeric heroes for whom honour and clan loyalties were supreme. Their technological sophistication may have been a bit below those of the Federation, but they were not unburdened by the cultural relativism of the non-interference directive, and were willing to fight their enemies with gusto if their honour was challenged.

Star Trek: Next Generation - Tony Todd (L) and Michael Dorn (R) as Klingons with honour in "Sins of the Father" (IMDB)

When we watch 3.17 "Sins of the Father" or 4.26 and 5.1 "Redemption Parts I & II", it's not a stretch to see parallels with family drama and Machiavellian politics seen in Shakespeare's histories such as Richard III, Henry V or Macbeth. They in effect told us that modern liberal societies lacked a sense of noble struggle so typical of warrior cultures. In "Redemption" the new emperor Gowron (Robert O'Reilly) challenges Worf's (Michael Dorn) insistence on Star Fleet protocol and thus the utopian liberalism of the Federation when he asks him to seek Picard's help to defeat the Duras clan:

Gowron: You come to me and demand the restoration of your family honour and now you hide behind human excuses? What are you, Worf? Do you tremble and quake with fear at the approach of combat, hoping to talk your way out of a fight like a human? Or do you hear the cry of the warrior calling you to battle, calling you to glory like a Klingon? ("Redemption")

It's clear that the Klingons represent a return to honour culture, to the idea that sovereign individuals have a duty to defend themselves according to a warrior code.

The golden age of sci-fi television was the 1990s, when one could watch everything from the paranormal police procedural The X-Files, the wacky reality hopping of Sliders, the grand space opera of Babylon 5, and the weirdness of Lexx and Farscape. One major theme connecting many of these series was the idea that state bureaucracies and official police forces could no longer be trusted or were entirely absent. As Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) told Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) with his dying breath at the end of season 1 of The X-Files, "trust no one." Instead, we get a number of shows about a group of criminals and rogues trying to escape the long arm of the law.

It all starts with the BBC series Blake's 7 in 1978, where our heroes are seven British rebels on the run from a malevolent and authoritarian Federation. We see a much weirder band aboard the planet-destroying living ship over four seasons of the Canadian-German production Lexx. Its crew included an undead Brunnen-G assassin name Kai (played by London, Ontario's own Michael McManus), a human security guard named Stanley Tweedle (Brian Downey), a sex-starved half-human, half-lizard named Zev (Xenia Seeberg) and a horny robot head named 790 (Jeffrey Hirschfield ). They had stolen the Lexx, the most powerful weapon in the universe, from His Divine Shadow, and use it to go on many strange adventures.

Farscape - Ben Browder as John Chrichton (1999) (IMDB)

Better know is the Australian show Farscape (19992003), which starred Ben Browder as the pistol-packing astronaut John Crichton, who winds up on another living alien ship with another band of criminals. These include the semi-human former Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), who Crichton has an epic love affair with; Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), a Luxan warrior with strange facial features; the plant-woman Zhaan (Virginia Hey); and two characters played by puppets, the squid-like Pilot (voiced by Lani Tupu) and the arrogant Dominar Rygel XVI (voiced by Jonathan Hardy). For a season they're chased by a revenge-seeking Peacekeeper Captain named Crais (Tupi again), later by the half-lizard Scorpius (Wayne Pygram), who wants John's wormhole knowledge.

Both Lexx and Farscape feature super-powered ships created by tyrannical governments where our heroes are outsiders being persecuted by supposedly legitimate governments. There's no sense that space is a utopian final frontier where liberal dreams can be pursued.

Perhaps the most iconic show in this genre is Firefly (200203). In it Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), an erstwhile Han Solo-style smuggler captain, leads a crew of eight civilians with various motivations, ranging from making enough money to survive to avoiding the clutches of the Alliance, which governs the central planets of two solar systems this space western takes place in. The world of Firefly is a direct parallel to America after the Civil War, where Union Blue and Confederate Grey are replaced by Alliance Purple and Independent Brown, with the rebels losing in both cases.

Though there are hints of an incipient intersectional feminism here the four female crew are all "strong female characters", with Zoe (Gina Torres) clearly dominating her husband Wash (Alan Tudyk, the pilot), and the unstable River Tam (Summer Glau) seeming to have psychic superpowers there is still a sense of balance of skills between crew members of diverse identities. But the world of Firely is no utopia: the technology is partly a return to the primitive world of horses and six-shooters, while our heroes spend more time escaping the law than exploring new frontiers.

Lastly, Andromeda (200005) deserves a brief mention as a sort of hybrid between the rogue ship and Star Trek motifs. The crew of the Andromeda are the typical misfits seen in other rogue ship series there's the shady smuggler captain Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder), the Nietzschean warrior Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb), the unstable techhead Seamus Harper (Gordon Michael Wolvett), and the catlike purple alien Trance Gemini (Laura Betram). But presiding over them all is Captain Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo), who wants to use his powerful ship to re-establish the long-dead Systems Commonwealth, a stand-in for the Federation. Though it's widely agreed that Andromeda's writing fell apart after its second season, it presents an interesting combination of utopian and dystopian visions of the future.

Starting in 2003 and still in play is the turn in sci-fi television from exploring the final frontiers of outer space to the internal frontiers of genetics and digital networks. As for the former, the Canadian show Orphan Black (20132017) starred Tatiana Maslany as a series of clones created by the Dyad Institute. These clones, who are scattered across the world, slowly discover themselves over the first season or two, and agree to band together to discover who is out to kill them. The main character is the English punk Sarah, who witnesses the suicide of one of her clones, a cop named Beth, in a subway station. She decides to impersonate her.

There are numerous threats to the clones' well being: Beth's boyfriend Paul (Dylan Bruce), who is really a plant by Dyad; Dr. Aldous Leekie (Matt Frewer), the Neolutionist spokesman of Dyad; the evil clone Rachel, who works for Dyad; and the murderous Ukrainian clone Helena, who has been brainwashed by a religious cult into think that cloning is sacrilege. This show rarely strays from advanced technologies, and presents a model of civil society where anything goes as long as you have money and power. It also buys into the intersectional fantasy that most straight white men are corrupt or evil, but at least balances this with plenty of evil women.

On the other hand, Channel 4's Black Mirror (2011-now) presents a world about 15-minutes into the future where contemporary or advanced technologies create an episodic series of dystopias where one or more new devices ruin people's lives. Most episodes simply amplify the technologies we're already addicted to in our daily lives cell phones, computers, video games, social media, virtual reality to see their impact on the lives of the episode's characters. For example, in 1.3 "The Entire History of You", Liam Foxwell (Toby Kebbell) becomes obsessed with replaying audio-visual recordings made by the "Grains" implanted in his and his wife Fee's (Jodie Whitaker) heads, leading him to tracking down her infidelity with the slimy Jonas, and the fact that he may not be the father of their child. The episode imagines a society where everyone is always recording everything that happens around them, unable to forget past slights and painful experiences.

In 3.1 "Nosedive", the culture is addicted to a Yelp-like personal ratings app that determines your status and access to goods, which turns most citizens into superficial conformist clones. Those who refuse are socially cancelled, or in extreme cases imprisoned. Charlie Brooker's series confirms Michel Foucault's notion that a Panopticon may be an efficient method of surveillance, but it's crippling to the human spirit.

Finally, the best sci-fi series of the naughties, Battlestar Galatica (200309), combines these two themes. In the opening mini-series 12 human colonies named after zodiac signs are attacked by the long-absent Cyclons, sentient robots who have developed a way of replicating human beings almost perfectly (though they only make 12 models). Fleeing the devastation, a rag-tag fleet of civilian ships lead by what we assume is the last surviving battlestar, the Galactica, seeks out the 13th colony, Earth.

Commanded by the gruff Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos), this aircraft carrier in space survived by not being networked to the fleet, and thus avoiding a computer virus that allowed the Cylons to disable the other colonial warships. Packed full of hotshot pilots such as Adama's son Lee AKA Apollo (Jamie Bamber), Starbuck (re-envisioned from the 1978 series as female, played by Katee Sackoff), and Boomer (Grace Park), the colonials are on constant watch for the enemy within -- Cylons posing as humans, of which there are many.

Though there is an element of discovery, the weapons are contemporary (guns, missiles and nukes), and the politics dystopian and conspiratorial. It was the perfect series for post-9/11 America. The last vestiges of Adama and President Roslin's (Mary McDonnell) liberal sentiments are tested over and over, as in "Pegasus" when a second battlestar appears captained by the ruthless Commander Cain (Michelle Forbes). The crew of the Pegasus regularly torture Cylon prisoners for information, refusing to acknowledge them as sentient beings, as part of the savage war against the "toasters".

Somewhere around 2013 a relatively new political ideology swept across university campuses, leftist political parties, and the mainstream mass media. It has different names, though I'll call it "intersectionalism", or simply woke politics. It claims that Western societies are racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic patriarchies where people are divided into groups bitterly fighting for power, some of them oppressors, some of them oppressed. Individual identities, thoughts, and actions no longer matter. If you were in a victim group, you should be given wealth, status and power; if you were an oppressor, you should accept your collective guilt and atone for your group's past sins in some sort of quasi-religious ritual. Though some refer to it as "liberalism", it has no concern for traditional liberal values such as freedom of speech (see Twitter for evidence), as it cancels its enemies through social media hate campaigns and takes a supremacist rather than inclusive approach to sexual and racial equality.

Woke ideology has spread like a virus throughout sci-fi television since 2017, when Jodie Whitaker became the first female Doctor on BBC's long-running series Doctor Who, and the stories ramped up the social justice themes started in Peter Capaldi's run on the show. Rather than fun explorations of weird alien species and worlds powered by an inclusive romanticism, the show became a preachy series of moral lessons for recalcitrant toxic males.

Star Trek: Discovery - Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham (IMDB)

The social justice virus metastasized rapidly throughout the casting, scripts, and direction of Star Trek: Discovery that same year. For the first time a Trek series focused on a single character, Michael Burnham, a Mary Sue-style "strong black woman" who can do no wrong, despite staging a mutiny against her captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and starting a war with the Klingons in the opening episode. She is eventually charged with her crimes, but is let off by Star Fleet to help them win the Klingon war she started. Burnham is continually praised by her crewmates, despite being arrogant and insufferable and making huge mistakes. She is an intersectional fantasy.

To make things worse, until Anson Mount's Captain Pike appears in season two, all the straight men on the show are either quickly killed off Admiral Anderson (Terry Serpico) in the opening battle, a mansplainer named Connolly (Sean Affleck) in the opening episode of season 2 or turn out to be villains Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) is a surgically altered Klingon spy, while Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) is a violent neofascist refugee from the mirror universe. The Klingons 3.0 seen in the series are given a bizarre orc-like appearance whose mantra "Remain Klingon" is an admitted dig at President Trump.

This banal allegory will have all the staying power of acid-washed jeans. Gone is the canonical view of the Klingons as honour-bound warriors: they are now a thinly-veiled allegory for white nationalism. To make things worse, Burnham becomes the narcissistic center of the whole "red angel" time-travel plot in the second season, since the universe isn't big enough to contain her ego, though she saves it anyways.

Added to the magical politics of the show are magical technologies, devices that not only destroy the Star Trek canon, but make no narrative or scientific sense. Chief among these is the Tardigrade drive, which hooks up the ship's engines to a giant bug which allows it to instantaneously travel to anywhere in the known universe, powered by mushroom spores, moving through an inter-stellar network of fungus roots. Besides wrecking Star Trek continuity and any sense of exploring a distant frontier which is, after all, only a bug-jump away it turns out that CBS probably stole the idea of a spore drive from an indie video game developer named Anas Abdin, whose 2014 game Tardigrades contains not only characters suspiciously similar to Burnham, engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Dr. Hugh Cubler (Wilson Cruz), and Ensign Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), but an almost identical spore drive.

This idea of magical technology is repeated in the current (2020) series Star Trek Picard, from a similar production team headed by Alex Kurtzman. So far we've learned about androids made entirely of flesh that can leap like Superman through the air, a forensic machine that can scan a room for past events, a magical Borg gate that can transport its users anywhere in the galaxy, a set of brass knuckles that can repair machines with the power of imagination, and the fact that an entire artificial brain can be re-constituted from a single positron. Picard continues the post-millennial theme in popular culture of preferring magic to science, in keeping with intersectionalism's rejection of the biological basis of sex, the structural basis of grammar, the logical basis of philosophy, and the market basis of capitalist economics.

The writing in the show is once again sloppy Admiral Picard is somehow held responsible for the loss of millions of Romulans after their sun goes supernova, despite the vastness of the Romulan Empire and fleet, and the fact that the rescue fleet being built on Mars is destroyed by rebel sentient androids. Set against Picard's feeble and guilt-laden character are a series of strong women the super-powered android twins Dahj and Soshi (Isa Briones), the Star Fleet security chief Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita), the ever-whining Raffi (Michelle Hurd), the sinister Romulan agent Narissa (Peyton List), the brilliant scientist Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) only partly alleviated by Santiago Cabrera's suave and funny Captain Rios. Once again it's a rogue ship theme, this time with the mission of saving a single android. No final frontiers or inclusive liberalism here.

The Expanse (2015) - Steven Strait as Jim Holden (Photo by Syfy/Shane Mahood/Syfy - 2016 Syfy Media, LLC / IMDB)

To end on a positive note, the best sci-fi series of the last decade is The Expanse, like most of the superior post-1995 sci-fi series filmed in Canada. Though it does make most of the villains white males, it returns in part to Star Trek's inclusive liberalism on the bridge of the Rocinante, with a nice balance between the visionary captain James Holden (played with dignity by Steven Strait), the thuggish Amos Burton (Wes Chatham), the charismatic Martian pilot Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar), and the warm and sympathetic "Belter" Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper).

In it, our solar system is divided between a United Earth, the Mars Congressional Republic, and the rough-and-ready inhabitants of the asteroid belt and outer colonies, who form the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). All are threatened by an alien "proto-molecule"m which takes over the Eros station and travels to Venus, where it creates a stargate that is launched toward Uranus. The science is realistic in terms of gravity creation, space travel, and weaponry, although the actions of the proto-molecule are mysterious. Though at heart a return to the rogue ship theme, there are hints of utopian dreams in the Martian attempt to terraform the planet, the OPA's attempt at independence, and the urge to explore new worlds now accessible through the alien-created stargate. The Expanse represents a firing of the retro-rockets on sci-fi television's crash into woke dystopias. Stay tuned for more.

This essay was originally presented at a science fiction club in London, Ontario, Canada.

Excerpt from:

From the Enterprise to the Discovery: The Decline and Fall of Utopian Technology and the Liberal - PopMatters

In Canada, there have been regular attempts to link Canadian gun organizations with the NRA, accusing legal gun owners of infiltrating government to form corrupt and unsafe firearms legislation. Yet, despite the allegations, tangible proof has been conspicuously absent from these claims. Until now. But its not from the group youd expect:

Canadas anti-gun lobby was recently caught engaging in this behavior.

In light of recent gun ban measures announced by Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair and firearms sales reaching an all-time high over societal fears of the COVID-19 virus, its a good time to revisit Canadas most infamous gun scandal in order reveal how backdoor dealings with an MP from the Liberal Party of Canada and the unethical actions of Canadas largest anti-gun lobby group continue to shape federal firearms legislation.

The Canadian Firearms Advisory Council (CFAC) advises the federal government on firearms policy. CFAC is supposed to represent gun owners and unlicensed civilians alike. Its a complex task, as there is a great deal of misinformation in the public sphere about firearms. For example, StatsCan shows gun ownership is way up, yet homicide is down. Government research proves Canadian gun owners are less likely to commit homicide, yet continue to be portrayed as a threat. The low homicide rate makes practical sense once you learn Canadian gun owners are screened daily by law enforcement.

The data has become a major problem for extreme activist group PolySeSouvient. The organization is starved for Canadian statistics to support their anti-gun position. Year after year, poly has been forced to rely on decades old high-profile shooting incidents and victim testimony in an attempt to manipulate public emotion due to Statscan releasing numbers which continually assert Canadian firearms ownership is extremely safe.

Senate committee hearings last year revealed Canada has 2.2 million licensed gun owners, yet over the previous decade, only 169 homicides involved a legal gun owner, leaving no substantial or plausible link between gun ownership and homicide. While any shooting event is certainly tragic, data from RCMP and StatsCan reveals that most of Canadas firearms problems stem from criminal gang violence, not gun ownership.

So, after years working with PolySeSouvient (Poly Remembers, made in memory of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre of 1989) and receiving sympathetic exposure from biased media outlets, it seemed as if Nathalie Provosts efforts finally hit pay dirt in 2017 when she was appointed as vice chair of CFAC by the Trudeau Liberals.

Provosts appointment was met with suspicion by many Canadians due to work shes done the anti-gun lobby since 2010. Shes also a shooting victim, of the aforementioned Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. CFAC appointees are required to remain impartial, recusing themselves from lobbyist activity while appointed.

Special treatment of vice-chair Provost was seen almost immediately after she strangely refused to learn existing Canadian firearms law by refusing to take the Canadians Firearms Safety course. She was personally excused from this practical measure by Canadas former Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who claimed it was insensitive and inappropriate for her.

Unfortunately, the concerns surrounding Provosts appointment became justified after an ATIP request initiated by Tracey Wilson of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights uncovered the infamous mandate letter in which Provost was identified as a Member and Spokesperson for her former anti-gun colleagues:

It seems Provost was eager to flex her new powers as vice-chair. The communication was sent to Ralph Goodale mere months after her appointment to CFAC, a direct violation of her mandate to refrain from lobbyist activity. Credit to Wilson here for predicting Provosts behavior and catching her almost immediately.

In the subsequent fallout, Provost was investigated by the federal lobbying commissioner. Despite public outrage, she managed to avoid disciplinary action due to a legal technicality: no evidence could be found that she was paid or compensated directly by Poly. Sound familiar?

Yet, its hard not to see a glaring conflict of interest here. Whether she was paid for her actions or not, the evidence is damning. Free lobbyist activity is still lobbyist activity, and the document clearly favours Polys organizational goals, not CFACs. No other group aside from Poly was consulted in the recommendation letter. It was neither submitted nor co-developed by CFAC. The letter came directly from PolySeSouvient with Provosts signature. Why was she still working with Poly nearly a year after being appointed to vice-chair?

Before we get to the meat of the letter, its important to note Provost later resigned from her position on CFAC in public outrage, claiming the liberals were too timid on assault-style guns, that her consultations were obviously useless. A revealing insight into Provosts mindset, corroborating the accusations of bias she faced during her investigation.

As for Ralph Goodale, due to his riding in Saskatchewan having many gun owners, he failed to win re-electiononly to be resurrected via an outrageous boutique hire by the Trudeau government.

Lets examine the key portion of Provosts mandate: Ive highlighted items in yellow which have already come into partial or full effect. Items in orange are currently being proposed through a rumored OIC.

Provosts public tantrum and subsequent resignation is baffling. A full six out of the eight items she requested were either partially imposed through RCMP bulletin or legislated via Bill C-71. Fast forward to 2020 with Justin Trudeaus proposed OIC gun confiscation, something he promised never to do, and it makes the final tally eight-out-of-eight, a perfect score for Provosts impartial recommendations.

Some gun owners may argue #7 came into effect in 1978 when full auto rifles were banned with bill C-51, however the slang term assault weapon is rhetoric used by anti-gun lobbyists which has no true meaning I am aware of. As such, my feelings are that imaginary objects cant be banned.

Regardless, this was a highly successful attempt (despite the unethicality) at lobbying our government. Canadas 2.2 million gun owners were completely ignored regarding this legislation, even after public consultation and senate committee hearings came back heavily against Bill C-71. The whole affair stinks to high heaven. It makes one wonder how often this corrupt dynamic occurs on other issues in the Canadian political landscape, yet slip through unnoticed.

Item number two of the mandate is a direct request to forbid marketing of the Canadian Firearms Safety Training. Its absurd. Why would an organization which claims to be devoted to public safety, want to discourage Canadians from taking safety training?

One hypothesis is that Canadas anti-gun lobby is trying to limit and impede the firearms licensing process. Canadas federally mandated safety courses are a prerequisite for licensing. By making it difficult to discover and enroll in safety courses, it could slow gun adoption rates. Also, citizens who take the CFSC and CRFSC are immediately made aware that Canada already has significant and severe gun control measures in place.

Gun owners are tested extensively on firearms legislation, becoming intimate with storage, transport, and usage laws through four separate examinationstwo written and two practical. After completion, graduates often realize terminology and discussions surrounding firearms in the media are frequently based on hyperbole.

Its hard to convince informed individuals more gun control is necessary once they learn their pistol is not only magazine limited, but federally registered and must be locked inside a secure case, with an additional trigger lock inside, and even then can only be used at a gun range which requires additional training and annual cost.

Unfortunately, It would seem the Liberal government may be trying to pre-emptively enforce this measure by closing the Canadian Firearms Program during the COVID Crisis, halting new firearms applications in Canada until further notice which means until Miramichi is re-opened, Canadians cant get a new gun license.

Mandate number seven from Provosts infamous letter references assault weapons designed for killing humans.

However, Canadas licensing process tests knowledge for every class of firearm available on the Canadian Market. Technical specifications, function and safe handling of assault weapons or military style semi-automatics is nowhere to be found in the course or testing because neither is a real classification of firearm.

Which brings us to today.

The language in Provosts letter is deliberately dishonest. Its an attempt to fool the general public, by using hyperbolic definitions. It seems Canadas anti-gun lobbyists are interested in creating a new firearms classification which is not based on technical specification, ballistic performance or function. By seeking a vague umbrella term worded to frighten the public, they are creating a generic label to ban any firearm they dislike in the future.

This approach was tried in New Zealand last year with disastrous results. Noncompliance is rampant. The new legislation criminalizes hundreds of thousands of gun owners with no violent history. Worse, the small percentage of gun owners who actually did choose to comply were rewarded with a massive data breach that gifted criminals with all their personal info and addresses exposing thousands to potential firearms theft. Its an absolute nightmare. New Zealand is in a far more dangerous position with respect to criminal firearms risk than a year ago. Lets not forget the shooter came from Australia, a country with similar gun laws in place.

Ultimately, what we have brewing here by Poly and the Liberals is a billion dollar solution to a manufactured problem, using sleazy back door channels to implement corrupt legislation with no debate, consultation or vote in the house of commons.

See the rest here:

How the anti-gun lobby infiltrated the Liberal government - The Post Millennial

Ten days ago the big news from Israel was that Benny Gantz was abandoning his opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu amid the coronavirus emergency and they were moving to form a unity government of former rivals, with a strong and all-Jewish majority: Netanyahus rightwing bloc of 58 seats + 15 or so of Gantzs shattered centrist Blue White party.

Now the days pass and no Israeli government! Why not? The news from Israel is that Netanyahu is negotiating under a lot of pressure from his right wing to use the Trump window, which may be closing soon, to annex the West Bank; and Gantz has folded. The main stumbling block to a new government are judiciary issues touching on Netanyahus indictment.

It seems sadly we are inching closer an closer to a reality we have worked hard to prevent, Adina Vogel-Ayalon of J Street said today: what liberal Zionists call annexation, but the right calls sovereignty (and the left calls the one-state reality).

Nancy Pelosi needs to act now and call Benny Gantz to head off the possibility, Tal Shalev of Walla News told a J Street webinar.

Shalev that Netanyahu has had a brilliant month politically and Gantz has folded again and again on negotiations over annexation, so that today it seems his Blue-White partner Gabi Ashkenazi is the only real block to annexation. Shalev said the agreement-in-progress between Gantz and Netanyahu for a new governing coalition gives Netanyahu authority and power to move ahead with annexation whenever he wants while consulting with Gantz and consulting with the international community. Consultation means nothing, Shalev said. Gantz will say that there are some limitations, but it seems like thats more of a mask, and it seems that Gantz acceded to all Netanyahus demands on annexation.

Gantz tried to block annexation but failed repeatedly as Netanyahu said forget about it, Shalev said.

Gantzs political difficulty is that there is a solid (all-Jewish) majority in the Knesset for annexation, and Trump is for anything Israel wants to do, so the moment is now. Netanyahu has a strong hand because Gantz already gave up his political capital; coronavirus has made Netanyahu a popular emergency leader and; Netanyahu can always hold out for a fourth election in which his chances are even better, given the breakup of Gantzs Blue White party.

Nimrod Novik, a foreign policy veteran, told J Street that negotiations are changing by the minute, but the latest terms are for a three-month freeze till July 10, on annexation.

On top of that, Netanyahu got good news today when Amir Peretz of Labor, who commands three seats, said he will join the Netanyahu bloc for annexation. So Gantz has lost political capital on the supposed liberal-Zionist side to stop Netanyahu.

Labor is officially a dead party. Amir Peretz merged his three seats into Gantzs Blue-White party, reports Lahav Harkov.

Novik lamented that annexation has gone from the whims of a messianic minority a few years ago to being all but Israeli policy. Its unbelievable. And even limited annexation will end almost inevitably with us controlling the entire territory and the 2.6 million Palestinians.

Though Netanyahu hasnt annexed any territory in ten years, the pro-annexation forces are inside his Likud party, not just on the far right.

Trump-joy contributes to the moment, because Israelis have gotten the feeling that they are invincible and can do anything they want and there are no consequences, Shalev says. Benny Gantz was so afraid of this feeling that he never came out against annexation in the recent campaign, met with Trump on friendly terms, and never presented a strong alternative to annexation.

Liberal Zionists regard annexation as a disaster because it would officially end the two-state solution in the eyes of the world. Besides presenting Israel with a whole set of security challenges related to the loss of a puppet authority, the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank, and the potential loss of Jordanian cooperation with Israel on Palestines eastern border and on the Haram-al-Sharif too, or Temple Mount in occupied Jerusalem.

Novik called on Democrats in the United States to act: Youd better act to deter this. Threaten Israel with the end of bipartisan support for Israel among Democrats and Republicans, by doing things we wont be able to accept, and maybe politicians will wake up.

Why doesnt Nancy Pelosi pick up the phone, call Benny Gantz? Shalev said, and tell him, This could be very, very dangerous. That would be more substantial pressure, with all my due respect to the liberal Zionists who are threatening Israel with consequences. Start communicating with Gantz as a real player.

While Novik said that thecost of annexation would be 52 billion shekels a year to Israel, or about $12 billion, four times the American security assistance. Let that sink in, Novik says.

Liberal Zionists are treating this as an emergency. The Israel Policy Forum board of directors implored Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz not to join a government that will annex territory in the West Bank. IPF writes as proud Zionists who have devoted our lives to supporting Israel.

We write to you as American Jewish communal leaders who are proudly Zionist, unquestionably pro-Israel, and who have devoted our lives to supporting the State of Israel and ensuring an ironclad relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

In the midst of this unprecedented health and financial crisis for Israel, we respectfully urge you not to use the need for unity in the face of emergency to create a different crisis for Israel by moving forward on unilateral annexation.

The IPF says that annexation would really wreck the relationship with American Jews (who have become more and more distant from the Jewish state):

Should annexation be advanced, the majority of American Jews who oppose such a policy will feel more alienated from Israel as a result. Just as we expect that our own government focus on the crisis at hand without using the fear and uncertainty felt by Americans to push through harmful and unrelated policies, we ask that the leaders of the Jewish state to which we are all so committed do the same.

The foreign policy establishment in the U.S. is also responding. Colin Kahl formerly of the Obama administration:

Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, theres growing concern that the right wing in Israel will push for annexation, perceiving a shrinking window to do so. Doing so would be profoundly unjust, costly, & dangerous. It would also jeopardize bipartisan US support for Israel.

Read more here:

Gantz and Netanyahu reportedly agree on annexing West Bank and liberal Zionists appeal to Pelosi - Mondoweiss

OTTAWA MPs will have to get back to work in Ottawa, before employers will get the funds from a massive $71-billion wage subsidy program the Liberals announced last week, but opposition parties say theyre prepared to work with the government to get the bill through.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Tuesday parliament would have to return and pass the bill before the program could be implemented.

That does require us to move forward on parliamentary legislation and thats what were talking about right now with parliamentarians, he said outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa.

The proposed wage-subsidy program is broader than the measures in earlier legislation to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, which was passed on March 25.

That legislation was passed through a special sitting of Parliament with just a fraction of MPs present, in order to reduce the possible spread of the virus. The bill originally contained a number of provisions, including some that would have given the Liberals unlimited tax-and-spend powers until the end of 2021, that led to a standoff in Parliament and a marathon negotiating session.

The original wage subsidy program in the March bill only covered 10 per cent of an employees wages and there were several other restrictions. The new program, as proposed in the draft copy of the bill the National Post obtained, is much broader with a subsidy of up to 75 per cent.

While there is no agreed time for Parliament to return yet, all sides are negotiating with the aim to do so soon. Once an agreement is reached, Speaker Anthony Rota would have to give a minimum 48-hours notice to recall the House.

Liberal House leader Pablo Rodrguez provided a copy of the new bill to opposition parties Monday evening, hoping to deal with potential issues in advance.

We really did have problems the last time and so there was a lot of concern and skepticism

Conservative House leader Candice Bergen said they were concerned the new legislation would have similar issues to the previous bill, but so far it appears to do only what the government said it would.

We really did have problems the last time and so there was a lot of concern and skepticism, she said. It is more in the spirit of what the government said they were going to be doing.

As currently written, businesses will be able to claim the subsidy as long as they can demonstrate they have suffered at least a 30 per cent drop in revenue and will be able to measure that either against revenues from 2019 or from January and February of this year.

Bergen said the Conservative have some tweaks they want to make to the legislation, but generally they want to see the program up and running.

We want to get people the support that they need, she said. We want the money out to people as soon as possible.

NDP House leader Peter Julian said theyre also skeptical after the previous experience and want to ensure the bill is as advertised.

We are going through it with a fine-tooth comb, he said.

Passing the legislation through the House of Commons normal process would take more than a week. The government is aiming to pass the legislation with unanimous consent, which could be done in an afternoon. Bergen and Julian said all sides are now working out the details of that process.

Julian said the NDP wants to see the Canada Emergency Response Benefit improved, because it currently misses many people.

A third of jobless dont have access to the benefit, people really need those supports.

Julian said his party would prefer a universal benefit paid to everyone as some governments have done rather than the current benefit that only applies to certain people.

I am hearing from families that are really struggling to put food on the table and they need the kind of response that we have seen in other countries.

I dont think we are coming in there with an our way or the highway mentality

Julian said he is confident all parties can come to a resolution.

I see good faith on all sides and I am confident and optimistic that we will be able to resolve these issues.

The Conservatives have also made suggestions to improve the governments response to COVID-19, including a refund of GST businesses have collected in the last six months and reversing an increase to the federal carbon tax that came in this month.

Bergen said the Conservatives do see room for negotiation, but dont intend to impede the wage subsidy.

I dont think we are coming in there with an our way or the highway mentality.

But, she added, the Conservatives expect the same flexibility from the government in return.

If Parliament is to be recessed for an extended time frame Conservatives want some mechanism for holding the government to account, she said.

We also would like the opportunity on an ongoing basis to ask the ministers questions, to ask the prime minister questions.

Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter:

Originally posted here:

COVID-19 crisis: Opposition ready to work with Liberals on new wage-subsidy bill - National Post

It appears that Benny Gantz is going to fold right in with Benjamin Netanyahu to undertake annexation of the West Bank, or large portions thereof.

This is a huge blow to liberal Zionists who counted on Gantz as head of a centrist anti-Netanyahu party to move Israel away from the settlement project. Now hes doing the opposite. The insult was redoubled when Amir Peretz, the leader of the Labor Party, with all of three members of parliament, announced that he was joining forces with Gantz.

Bottom line, there is no political force in Israeli Jewish politics for ending the occupation. The only force inside Israel against occupation is the Joint List of Palestinian legislators; and theyre not allowed anywhere near government.

Yesterday on a J Street Zoom conference, two alarmed Israelis were imploring Democratic politicians to warn Israel that if it continues on this course, it will alienate the Democratic Party and undermine bipartisan consensus for Israel. In other words, Democrats should be threatening Israel with actual reductions of aid if Israel continues on this course.

But liberal Zionists never endorsed such threats over 25 years of Israeli expansion and feckless peace processing.

The obvious question about this liberal political disaster is: How did the liberal Zionists get it so wrong? These people hate the occupation, as a threat to the two-state solution. They have documented the abuses of occupation for 20 years. Yet why did everything they did to stop the occupation fail?

The answer is that liberal Zionists mistrusted the left more than they did the Zionist right. They were happy to argue the question with the Zionist right, in a spirit of Jewish solidarity (and lose again and again).

They didnt even allow the left in the room. Because much of the left is anti-Zionist. And in the end, liberal Zionists really believe in the need for a Jewish state more than an end to the occupation.

So the only tool that could have stopped Israel economic/symbolic global pressure through the nonviolent Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement the liberal Zionists wanted nothing to do with. They ran numerous campaigns denouncing BDS. They supported legislation that says BDS is antisemitic.

The rightwing Israeli government is terrified of BDS. Benjamin Netanyahu rails against it as an existential threat, as undermining Israels reputation. Israel spends millions to combat it and rightwing Israel lobby groups spend millions here to fight it and try to make BDS illegal. Liberal Zionists largely joined the fight of its rightwing friends. Because many BDSers are against a Jewish state, and that was the number one priority for liberal Zionists. Liberal Zionists said the BDS campaign was against the self-determination of the Jewish people.

So even though liberal Zionists hated the occupation they became patsies for the occupation. Here are some of their tactical collapses:

They said that Israel responded to love not pressure, look at Bill Clinton and Camp David, so we shouldnt pressure Israel and make her feel insecure.

They said that it was ok to talk about possibly conditioning aid to Israel that paid for the demolition of Palestinian villages, as Jeremy Ben-Ami said last October. But that $4 billion in aid must never be reduced. J Street doesnt think there is a reason for to reduce the level of the aid.

They said that political support for Israel must remain bipartisan. They did not want the aid politicized.

They said that they would rather have the company of rightwing Zionists than anti-Zionists. Americans for Peace Now is on the board of AIPAC. J Street invites a lot of conservative American Zionists to speak, but never an anti-Zionist Jew (though some young ones slip through the cracks).

The liberal Zionists tried to redline anti-Zionism because they were concerned that anti-Zionist pressure would empower Palestinians who dont believe in a Jewish state, and the result would be a one-state nightmare, bloody rollercoaster, as someone once put it, and possibly some implementation of the right of return under which Palestinian refugees or their descendants would get back homes and property stolen from them during the Nakba. Liberal Zionists were terrified of the right of return, which is a pillar of the BDS campaign, because it threatens the Jewish majority in Israel, and was thought to destabilize Israel. Though as even Leanne Gale pointed out in a rare anti-Zionist dissent at a J Street conference, the two-state solution called for addressing the right of return, and the real fear was BDSs call for equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

And I actually think thatthatmay be the most threatening plank of the BDS movement to many of us in the American Jewish community. Because it really gets to the heart of Zionism itself. It really gets to the heart of, Do we believe deep down, that there can be a Jewish and democratic state?

The liberal Zionists are Jewish organizations, and in the end they respected conservative codes of Jewish solidarity: Jewish collective support for the Jewish state, because 95 percent of American Jews are for Israel. Jews must speak in one voice in Washington, because our support is existential, we hold the breathing tube for Israel in the courts of the superpower.

And so the one tool that Israel fears, international pressure, the liberal Zionists refused to support. The tool that liberals used so effectively in the Jim Crow South and apartheid South Africa to fight systemic racism, liberal Zionists worked against.

And look what they got, one apartheid state. That Israel no longer has a political constituency for a genuine 2 state solution or ending Israeli occupation is the most under-reported and under-analyzed realities in all Middle East policy analyses, writes Khaled Elgindy of Brookings.

The calls to punish Israel now for the colonization of the West Bank are too little too late. Theres one sovereign in Israel and Palestine, Israeli leaders are all for the occupation, and they all take American support for granted. As well they should. The liberal Zionists were all talk and no action.

See original here:

Liberal Zionists couldnt end the occupation because they feared equality more than Israeli right - Mondoweiss

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) Huntington Ingalls Industries, owner of the Newport News Shipbuilding division, announced on Thursday that the company has updated and extended its liberal leave policy due to the continued spread of the coronavirus.

The updates will begin Monday, April 6 and be enterprise-wide. The leave is designed to allow flexibility and additional options for employees who need to make arrangements for families, child care, business closures, and any other planning needed due to the coronavirus.

The updated and extended policy defines the following situations as eligible for liberal leave:

The company released that employees who fall into one or more of the categories may be eligible for unemployment insurance by applying through the employees state agency.

Newport News Shipbuilding released that it plans to have the liberal leave in effect until at least April 30. Information on NNSs liberal leave documentation process can be found online.

The policy follows along with the recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to expand financial lifelines for individuals and their families, according to a statement released. At HII, we have been following the CARES Act closely and have decided to modify our liberal leave policy in response to the acts unemployment insurance ruling to provide greater options for our employees and their families.

Read more about Newport News Shipbuilding daily coronavirus updates.

See the article here:

Huntington Ingalls updates and extends liberal leave policy for Newport News Shipbuilding and other divisions - WAVY.com

While coronavirus ravages the globe and hits all major financial capitals, it is dawning on the common man that the capitalist ideology and liberalism has failed to rise to the occasion and this fair weather friend called capitalism is an anathema to the word humanity.

Interestingly, it is also becoming apparent that states like China, with central control and disciplined populations, are more suitable to fight pandemics like Coronavirus. Some of the so-called mature democracies like the US and European countries as well as noisy ones like India have not only failed to come out with a cohesive response but also resorted to gimmickry and deflection. The recent example of Indian PM Modi asking 1300 million Indians to come out in their balconies and clap and light candles is testimony to this absurdity. Someone from Dharawi Slum in Mumbai, the largest slum in Asia, asked PM Modi through social media with three families living in a hundred square foot room, where should they find a balcony.

As per Wikipedia, economic liberalism is a political and economic philosophy based on strong support for a market economy and private property in the means of production. Although economic liberals can also be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, they tend to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition.

As an economic system, economic liberalism is organised on individual lines, meaning that the greatest possible number of economic decisions are made by individuals or households rather than by collective institutions or organisations. An economy that is managed according to these precepts may be described as a liberal economy.

Adam Smith and his followers in the west advocated for economic liberalism, emphasising on free markets and private ownership of capital assets. Economic liberalism is also considered opposed to non-capitalist economic orders such as socialism and planned economies. It also contrasts with protectionism because of its support for free trade and open markets.

If economic liberalism was considered as a panacea to all problems faced by humanity, why did states intervene in Italy, Spain, France, US and even in South Asia and Africa to stem the tide of coronavirus, and, why did a socialist state like China fare better in this pandemic?

Since mainstream media in most democracies is controlled by vested corporate interests and the rich, the discussion on rights of the 99% vs the 1% rich does not take place openly. Coronavirus has exposed this nexus and its time to highlight it for the general public.

Foreign Policy magazine conducted a short survey, asking some leading thinkers and opinion makers to come out with their assessment on the impact of coronavirus on the New World Order.

Stephen M Walt believes that the pandemic will strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism. Governments of all types will adopt emergency measures to manage the crisis, and many will be loath to relinquish these new powers when the crisis is over. COVID-19 will also accelerate the shift in power and influence from West to East. South Korea and Singapore have responded best, and China has reacted well after its early mistakes. The response in Europe and America has been slow and haphazard by comparison, further tarnishing the aura of the Western brand.

Walt goes on to conclude that conflictive nature of world politics. Previous plagues including the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 did not end great-power rivalry nor usher in a new era of global cooperation. Neither will COVID-19. We will see a further retreat from hyper-globalisation, as citizens look to national governments to protect them and as states and firms seek to reduce future vulnerabilities.

In short, COVID-19 will create a world that is less open, less prosperous, and less free. It did not have to be this way, but the combination of a deadly virus, inadequate planning, and incompetent leadership has placed humanity on a new and worrisome path.

Robbin Niblett stated that it seems highly unlikely in this context that the world will return to the idea of mutually beneficial globalisation that defined the early 21st century. And without the incentive to protect the shared gains from global economic integration, the architecture of global economic governance established in the 20th century will quickly atrophy. It will then take enormous self-discipline for political leaders to sustain international cooperation and not retreat into overt geopolitical competition.

Getting closer to home in South Asia, we find the same failure of economic liberalism at play in India. On one side, India boasts billionaires and brainiacs, nuclear bombs, technology and democracy, whereas on the other, it conceals the fact that two-thirds of people in India live in poverty or on the margins.

Why is India getting exposed in her own people and the international media? For decades, India has remained on the top spot of countries with 70% population living below or on the margins of poverty line. Tens of millions of people remain destitute and thousands of farmers commit suicide each year. Nearly 40 percent of Indian children under 5 are short for their age, a sign of chronic under nutrition. Then it invented the witchcraft of playing with figures thus bluffing the Indian nation and the international community.

Indian Finance Minister announced a relief package worth Rs1.70 lakh crore to help the nations poor tackle the financial difficulties arising from Covid-19 outbreak. Under the relief package, at least 800 million poor people will be covered; this package will translate into an additional five kilos of rice/wheat for every individual for a period of one month.

Indian mega-slums like Dharawi are made up of millions of informal workers who run mega cities like Mumbai, these slums are without sufficient drinking water supply, without garbage disposal and in many cases without electricity. The richest 10% in India controls 80% of the nations wealth, according to a 2017 report by Oxfam. And the top 1% owns 58% of Indias wealth. (By comparison, the richest 1% in the United States owns 37% of the wealth). Another way to look at it: In India, the wealth of 16 people is equal to the wealth of 600 million people.

The coronavirus lockdown in India created a wave of poor and hapless people who were evicted from their work places and temporary homes by the rich, since they could not pay for their food and rent, the world witnessed a massive migration of approximately 10 million Indian marching for hundreds of kilometres to their villages, some of them dying on the roads. This March of Shame has actually become an epitaph on the grave of economic liberalism in India.

To conclude, economic liberalism has played havoc in developed and developing countries and has failed the test of our times; it has created a swamp of money in the hands of 1% super rich and the states have become hostage to these individuals and multinational corporations. The post-corona environment is definitely going to change how states and the people come up with a new social contract.

Adeela Naureen and

Umar Waqar

The authors are freelance journalists. They can be reached at adeelanaureen@gmail.com.

Originally posted here:

Coronavirus and economic liberalism - The Nation

On Tuesday, a host of liberal Twitterati which loves to see PM Narendra Modi with egg on his face lost its collective marbles in joy mind you when they thought the Modi government had allegedly buckled to Uncle Sams pressure and allowed the export of hydroxychloroquine after Trump threatened retaliation.

A host of individuals including top Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor not to mention the literati on Twitter got super excited about Trumps retaliation and Modi supposedly buckling to pressure.

Some even got misty-eyed about the time when Indira Gandhi showed Richard Nixon his place.

The CPI(M) known for its love for Uncle Sam slammed Modis capitulation to brazen blackmail. This came despite the fact that India was already engaged in a discussion on HCQ supply after Trump and Modis speech.

For starters, Trumps retaliation comment came after a reported asked him questions. But more on that later.

Secondly, as explained by the Print editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta, among others, the outrage is misplaced if one accepts the true chronology of events.

Heres the dateline:

April 4 Trump calls Modi, say he has request Modi for HCQ that Uncle Sam had ordered, and admitted that India also needs a lot.

April 5 Roughly 4 AM IST Trump says he had another conversation with Modi and India will likely release the required HCQ and makes the retaliation comment.

Read the transcript:

Trump said: I dont like that decision. I didnt hear that that was his decision. I know that he stopped it for other countries. I spoke to him yesterday. We had a very good talk and well see whether or not that is. I would be surprised if he would because India does very well with the United States. For many years theyve been taken advantage of the United States on trade. So I would be surprised if that were his decision. Hed have to tell me that. I spoke to him Sunday morning, called him, and I said, wed appreciate your allowing our supply to come out. If he doesnt allow it to come out, that would be okay. But of course there may be retaliation. Why wouldnt there be? Yeah.

Now heres the real problem. Even before Trumps statement, several reports had already pointed out that India had agreed to lift the ban.

They were Mint, The Hindu and The Print. This occurred even before Trumps evening presser. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together who doesnt have an agenda can clearly see

But as the old saying goes, a lie can travel halfway across the world even before the truth can get its boot on. Now with Twitter, the lie doesnt even need to leave its house during quarantine.

The rest is here:

Sorry liberals, Modi didnt buckle to Trumps retaliation threat to export hydroxychloroquine heres the full story - Free Press Journal

OTTAWA The Liberal government was forced into a significant climbdown on Wednesday morning over its COVID-19 emergency legislation, after being accused of a power grab that would equip the finance minister with exceptional authorities to tax, spend and loan money without limit.

Parliament passed an updated version of Bill C-13 in the early morning following a full day of negotiations between parties. The NDP and Conservatives had been highly opposed to certain sections of the initial legislation, which would have given Finance Minister Bill Morneau at least 19 months of extraordinary legislative powers rarely seen in Canadian political history.

Much of the initial proposals remain in place. But opposition parties managed to dramatically pare back some of the more sweeping aspects of the bill, trimming the window of time in which Morneau can exercise his new powers, and sharpening the details around the type of spending Ottawa can bring forward over the next six months.

Opposition members were caught off guard by a number of measures introduced in the legislation, particularly a surprise clause that gave Morneau the ability to raise or lower taxes without the approval of Parliament. That clause was outright scrapped before Wednesdays vote.

Conservative MP Scott Reid, who was the first to raise opposition to the bill, said he had become increasingly alarmed by the haste with which the emergency legislation had been tabled, saying the Liberal measures would effectively strip away parliamentary oversight for the next two years.

The initial draft of the bill, which first leaked to media Monday night, would have given Morneau until the end of December 2021 to use his expanded powers, a total of 21 months. The more recent version trims that window down to six months, until the end of September 2020.

Morneau on Wednesday did not respond directly to reporters questions about why the 21-month timeline was necessary.

This would give the minister of finance the power to do anything, literally

The bill also proposed to give Ottawa far-reaching authority to make payments to any entity during any times of significant and systemic economic and financial distress. Opposition members and many observers said the text was excessively broad, breaking with past parliamentary conventions and allowing Ottawa to buy equity, offer lines of credit, or bail out companies at any time for any purpose.

This would give the minister of finance the power to do anything, literally, Scott told the National Post.

The updated legislation changed the text from any entity to provincial and territorial governments, vastly restricting what bodies those federal funds can flow into. The new text allows payments to entities only after the government has consulted with provinces and territories. Ottawa has already pledged $500 million to lower orders of government in additional healthcare funding.

Opposition members also denounced the fact that section four of the initial draft gave the minister of health the ability to spend all money required to do anything if the minister determines that there is a public health event of national concern.

Critics again balked at the sweeping language of the proposed text. An updated version provides the same powers to the minister, but more specifically stipulates that the spending would need to come amid the spread of an infectious disease, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Also on Wednesday, policymakers passed a motion that will compel Morneau to appear before the House finance committee every two weeks to update the public on where and how much money has been spent.

The legislation was introduced in order to trigger $27 billion in aid spending first announced by Morneau last week, as part of an effort to help families and businesses cover their cost of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. That figure could will soar much higher with the passage of Bill C-13, which sets no upper limit on how much Ottawa can spend to combat the economic fallout from the virus.

Morneau on Wednesday had already upped his initial cost estimate for the measures to $52 billion, as employment insurance claims soar.

Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter:

See the rest here:

Here's what changed in the COVID-19 emergency bill and why opposition called it a Liberal 'power grab' - National Post

President TrumpDonald John TrumpThe pandemic is bad, we need the capability to measure just how bad Florida governor wants federal disaster area declaration Amash calls stimulus package 'a raw deal' for 'those who need the most help' MOREs reelection campaign is threatening legal action against television stations in key battleground states if they continue airing an ad cut by the liberal super PAC Priorities USA alleging that the president called the coronavirus a hoax.

Alex Cannon, the legal counsel for Trumps reelection campaign, sent a letter to television stations in key battleground states where the ad is running demanding they cease and desist from airing the ad if they want to avoid costly and time consuming litigation.

Given the foregoing, should you fail to immediately cease broadcasting PUSAs ad Exponential Threat, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. will have no choice but to pursue all legal remedies available to it in law and in equity the letter states. We will not stand idly by and allow you to broadcast false, deceptive, and misleading information concerning Presidents Trumps healthcare positions without consequence.

Priorities USA is putting $6 million behind the ad, which is running on television stations in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The ad, which istitledExponential Threat, splices together different audio clips of Trump downplaying the virus over a graphic showing the number of cases on the rise.

"The coronavirus, this is their new hoax, Trump says in the ad. We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. When you have 15 people and within a couple of days is gonna be down to close to zero. We really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand. No, I don't take responsibility."

However, fact-checkers at The Washington Post, Snopes, Politifact and FactCheck.org have said its wrong to claim that Trump called the virus a hoax.

Instead, Trumps full quote reveals that he was describing Democratic efforts to politicize the virus.

Coronavirus. Theyre politicizing it, Trump said in February. We did one of the great jobs. You say, Hows President Trump doing? Oh, nothing, nothing. They have no clue. They dont have any clue.... And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something thats been pretty amazing.

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenIs coronavirus the final Trump crisis? The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Airbnb - Senators clinch deal on T stimulus package Biden hits Trump's remarks about reopening economy within weeks: 'He should stop talking' MOREs campaign and several other Democratic groups have used the hoax remarks in their own videos. The Trump campaign has asked Twitter to apply its manipulated media tag to videos claiming that Trump called the virus a hoax, but the social media giant has declined to intervene.

The Trump campaign's threat of legal action comes after an outside group aligned with the president, America First Priorities, sent a similar letter to the same TV stations demanding they pull the ad off the airwaves.

In a statement to The Hill regarding the America First complaint, Priorities USA strategist Josh Schwerin called the move a stunt.

"We stand by the facts in the ad and will continue to make sure that Donald Trump is held accountable for his words and actions that are making this crisis even worse," Schwerin said.

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Trump campaign threatens legal action over liberal super PAC ad | TheHill - The Hill

Minister of Finance Bill Morneau attends a news conference with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, on March 11, 2020.

BLAIR GABLE/Reuters

That was a big oops. The Liberal governments explanation for putting a 21-month blank cheque into emergency legislation was essentially that officials and aides wanted to give Finance Minister Bill Morneau flexibility in a crisis, and got carried away. Nobody caught the grab for additional powers. An accident. Oops!

So Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had to start out his daily press conference pledging that he will stick with the whole democracy thing even in a time of crisis. Mr. Trudeau has for days been explaining he didnt need to invoke the Emergencies Act for more powers, but by Tuesday, his government had so overreached that he had to profess his unwavering commitment to democracy.

The original version of the legislation, before the opposition cried foul, allowed for Mr. Morneau to tax, borrow or spend without any parliamentary approval, until the end of 2021. It dispensed with even the basic safeguard in the Emergencies Act, including limited parliamentary oversight and shorter time limits, such as 90 days, on emergency powers. It was so offside, the government withdrew the most offending part at the 11th hour around 11 p.m. Monday night and on Tuesday entered negotiations with the opposition about other sections.

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The uncomfortable thing is that this grasping move betrays a panicky uncertainty among the people making economic policy in Ottawa.

They are so unsure about what is needed to stabilize the economy that they tried to obtain the power to borrow, tax, and spend as they see fit, at the stroke of a pen, for nearly two years.

The desire to be able to move quickly is understandable. Every week seems to bring the coronavirus crisis and its economic impact to a new scale. Yet this move is a byproduct of the way the Liberal government has handled the economic package that is supposed to reassure Canadians.

The first tranche announced last week was big, for normal times $27-billion in spending and $55-billion in temporary tax deferrals but not so big that it got ahead of the rising wave of fears and really reassured the public. The U.S. Congress is working on a US$2-trillion bill, and though the two packages and economies are not exactly comparable, the scale isnt, either.

It seems likely that finance officials wanted all those extra powers because theyre not only worried about the unpredictability of the future, theyre uncertain about the adequacy of what they have already done. The economic package in the legislation going before Parliament doesnt put Canada firmly ahead of the curve.

The 10-per-cent wage subsidy is so small, it seems like the government didnt believe in the idea. And perhaps wage subsidies are not the right choice but small ones will probably not keep a lot of people on payrolls. The emergency benefit of $900 every two weeks is not enough for those who dont get some other sum, like the enhanced Canada Child Benefit. The feds might add sums later, but it is important to reassure quickly.

Some things, like industrial bailouts, might take a little more time. But for big things, its not impossible to recall Parliament, as they did Tuesday. In the meantime, the Finance Minister needs a little flexibility. But not a Constitution made of Play-Doh.

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The Liberals note they sent a draft of the bill to the opposition in advance, and the offending provisions will be fixed. No harm, no foul. And lets accept mistakes will be made in a rush job. But this one betrayed a reckless disregard for parliamentary checks and balances. It was a big mistake.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer took the sensible position that his party was willing to pass the package of economic supports, but not the most egregious overreaches for new powers without oversight. He was not wrong. Conservative backbencher Scott Reid defied his own party by showing up at the House of Commons when only a small rump of MPs from each party was supposed to attend, because he objected to the process, and that the bill wont even have after-the-fact monitoring by a parliamentary committee. He was not wrong, either. Instead of mustering multiparty co-operation in a crisis, the Liberals triggered tense negotiations.

The partisan bickering wasnt reassuring. Neither was the panicky grab for spending powers. Mr. Trudeaus Liberals had worked to reassure the public, and then we saw them sweat.

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The panicky legislative power grab at Liberal crisis central isnt reassuring - The Globe and Mail

Calvin in Hell, Egbert van Heemskerck the Younger (c.170010). (Photo by Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images)

To understand Liberalism, we need to understand early modern Calvinism. This is the central claim made by Harvard professor James Simpson in his idiosyncratic but challenging new book, Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism. As its dust jacket proclaims, Simpson means to rewrite the history of liberalism by uncovering its unexpected debt to evangelical religion. His aim is to show how the English Reformation, so authoritarian in its beginnings, culminated in the proto-liberal Glorious Revolution settlement of 168889 and led to the English Enlightenment.Ad Policy Books in Review

The key feature of that settlement, Simpson argues, was the Toleration Act, which gave ease to scrupulous consciences in the exercise of religion by allowing Protestant Dissenters from the Church of England freedom of worship and exemption from the penalties previously attached to nonattendance at Anglican services. This exemption was not extended to Roman Catholics, Unitarians, or Jews, and public office continued to be confined to those who worshipped in the Church of England. Many of the legislators saw toleration less as a matter of principle than as an unpleasant necessity, a pragmatic way of avoiding further strife. Nevertheless, Simpson insists that this was a foundational moment for the English liberal tradition. The Toleration Act was accompanied by a Bill of Rights declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and was followed by statutory provision for the annual meeting of Parliament, the independence of the judiciary, and qualified freedom of the press.

Whether or not this was the foundational moment of English liberalism, one might also ask in what sense this was all a consequence of Calvinism. The conventional answer is that, by making the vernacular Bible accessible to all, the Protestant reformers encouraged people to think for themselves and claim the right to do so. In addition, their doctrine of the priesthood of all believers generated a belief in human equality and encouraged respect for personal religious experience, private judgment, and individual conscience. Out of this came notions of individuality and human rights.

Many historians of political thought agree that, in this way, liberalism grew out of evangelical religion. Simpson toys with this interpretation in his discussion of the poet John Miltons radical thought, which he suggests was hammered out of, and bore powerful traces ofilliberal Protestantism. But in every other respect he categorically rejects the notion that the Reformation led inexorably to liberalism, describing the idea as unacceptable Whig triumphalism. He twice quotes Herbert Butterfields observation in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) that religious liberty was not the natural product of Protestantism but emerged painfully and grudginglyout of the tragedy of the post-Reformation world. Following Butterfields lead, Simpson argues that the liberal tradition is the younger sibling of evangelical religion but that it derives from Protestantism by repudiating it. Early Protestantism, he asserts, was so punishingly violent, fissiparous and unsustainable that it eventually led its adherents to invent a political doctrine to stabilize cultures after 150 years of psychic and social violence; the result was nascent liberalism. Unfortunately, the suggestion that it was not until 1688 that quasi-liberal sentiments were widely voiced in England flies in the face of the evidence. So does the notion that it was only in a religious context that they emerged at all.

Simpsons claim that liberal ideas were a by-product of the Reformationone unintended by its original makersis by no means new, though it has never been so relentlessly pursued. Two hundred and thirty years ago, in a little-noticed section of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon observed that the Reformation taught each Christian to acknowledge no law but the scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigour their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The same point was made by the great liberal historian G.P. Gooch in his 1898 The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century and by the quasi-Marxist philosopher and social theorist Harold Laski in his 1936 Rise of European Liberalism, both of whom argued that liberal ideas were an unintended consequence of the Reformation and thus anathema to its makers. More recently, Berkeley historian Ethan Shagan has maintained that Protestantism was an authoritarian project, not a liberal one, and that the Enlightenment was a reaction against the habits of mind the Reformation had generated. But if that is all that Simpson means by the illiberal roots of liberalism, one might equally well speak of the Catholic roots of Protestantism or the capitalist roots of Marxism.

Simpson could have made a different and much stronger case for the Protestant origins of liberalism had he not completely passed over (Miltons writings excepted) the astonishing ferment of ideas that erupted between 1642 and 1660, the years of the English Civil War and Interregnum. In a brilliant essay, British historian Blair Worden took this ferment seriously and, as a result, offers a far more sophisticated approach to the question of liberalisms Protestant roots. John Calvin, he notes, maintained that spiritual libertyby which he meant emancipation from the bondage of sin and complete submission to Gods willis perfectly compatible with the absence of civil liberty. But as Worden points out, this view was rejected in the 1640s by many radical English Protestants, who, faced with Presbyterian intolerance, realized that their spiritual goals could not be attained if they were denied the freedom to practice their religion. Congregationalists, Levellers, and army leaders therefore claimed that liberty of conscience and worship was a civil right, even though, paradoxically, they thought of it as the right to become Gods slaves. They extended the same plea of conscience to include other civil liberties, such as the right to form separatist congregations or to withhold the payment of tithes. By stressing this new kind of Protestant political thought, Worden was able to conclude that it was from within Puritanism, not in reaction to it, that the demand for civil liberty and thus liberalism emerged.

In a valuable recent study, Stanford historian David Como further illuminates the process by which, in the 1640s, liberty of consciencesometimes even for Jews, Muslims, and atheistscame to be seen by many Protestant separatists in England as a fundamental political right, indivisibly connected to other inviolable civil liberties like freedom of the press, freedom to petition the government, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, and freedom to vote in parliamentary elections. As the century wore on, he argues, the theological trappings tended to be clipped away, and these claims were sometimes presented as the natural Right of Mankind.Current Issue

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Simpson not only misses this emergence of liberal ideas in the 1640s; his preoccupation with Protestantism also leads him to give insufficient space to the many historians of political thought who have pointed to the nontheological origins of liberalism. He recognizes the influence of the humanistic neo-Roman theory of liberty, but he says little about the medieval vogue for natural law theories, though it was from this tradition that the idea of human rights emerged in the 17th century, starting with the universal right to self-preservation postulated by Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. He also makes only the vaguest reference to the resistance theories formulated by Protestant authors in the reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor, which gave the people both the right and the duty to remove tyrannous or idolatrous rulers. Instead, having explained liberalism as a simple reaction to what preceded it, Simpson devotes most of his book not to charting its rise but to following the illiberal progress of Protestantism over the same period, painting a vivid, indeed passionate, picture of what he sees as its devastating contribution to human unhappiness.

Echoing political theorist Michael Walzers 1965 The Revolution of the Saints, which portrayed Puritanism as a revolutionary ideology and the Puritan saint as the first active, ideologically committed political radical, Simpson identifies Protestantism as a revolutionary movement. His original contribution to this insight is to extend the boundaries of the revolution. He argues that the break with Rome was only the first stage in a state of permanent revolution, as Protestants repeatedly and compulsively repudiated previous forms and generated new ones, only to abandon them in due course for yet another nostrum, eventually clearing the path for a new liberal politics.

This is in many respects a useful way to characterize the shifts from the 1530s to the 1640s, from King Henry VIIIs break with Rome to Edward VIs Protestantism, from the Lutheran belief that Jesus Christ was substantially present in the Eucharist to the view of the rite as purely symbolic, from Episcopalianism to Presbyterianism, and from Presbyterianism to sectarianism. Simpson could have found striking corroboration for this process of permanent revolution in the spiritual odysseys of figures like the ex-tailor Laurence Clarkson (16151667). Never satisfied with his religious condition, Clarkson moved from the established church to Presbyterianism, which he rejected in turn to become an Independent, then an antinomian, then a Baptist, then a Seeker, then a Ranter, then a white witch, and finally a Muggletonian. This spiritual restlessness is what Simpson calls English Protestantisms kinetic process of endless movement, yet it was most intense in the years he puzzlingly neglects. He never even mentions the appearance in the 1650s of the Quakers, whose total rejection of a separate priesthood and formal liturgy took Protestantism to its logical and most revolutionary conclusion.

As a way of characterizing English Protestantism, the concept of permanent revolution, with its suggestion that people move to ever more extreme positions, has its limitations. Indeed, some of the makers of the early Reformation were far more radical than most of those who followed them. The Lollards of the 15th century were closer in their views to the sectaries of the 1640s than they were to the leaders of the Elizabethan church. The early reformer Robert Barnes, who was burned for heresy in 1540, declared that no day was holier than the rest, not even Christmas or Easter, while William Tyndale, the biblical translator martyred in 1536, was a mortalist who believed that the soul slept until the general Resurrection. Not until the 1640s were such views publicly ventilated.

One might also question Simpsons insistence that the progress of Protestantism was as relentless as the notion of permanent revolution might suggest. As he admits, it went into reverse in the early 17th century with the rise of Arminianism, which asserted free will against Calvinisms predestination, and with the capture of the Anglican Church by the Laudians, who embraced this new doctrine and introduced elaborate church ceremonial in place of Puritan simplicity. Yet as Simpson rightly notes, it was Arminianism that pointed most powerfully to the liberal future, since its belief in free will became a necessary precondition for liberalisms attachment to individual liberty.Related Article

It is also hard to accept Simpsons claim that Protestantism was more concerned with combating earlier versions of itself than with challenging Catholicism. For all the differences between different brands of evangelicalism, the hatred of popery far exceeded the internecine quarrels among Protestants. Catholic priests were classified as traitors by the government in 1585. The Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot were central to Protestant mythology. The fear of Catholic conspiracies played a crucial role in the origins of the English Civil War and was still present after the Restoration. The Great Fire of London in 1666 was blamed on Catholics, the rumored Popish Plot resulted in a major political crisis in 1679, and James IIs Catholicism played a large part in his downfall.

Simpson takes a dim view of early Protestantism. He is a specialist in late medieval English literature and, unsurprisingly, is partial to the writers of the 14th and 15th centuries. In an earlier work, he contrasted the rich varieties of genres and sensibilities found in the mystery cycles and the writings of William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Thomas Malory with the centralized uniformity and dreariness of the literature of the early Tudor period. He also remarked on the profound delusions of the evangelical theology that took root in this latter era. He regrets the Protestant destruction of medieval sculpture, wall paintings, and stained glass. But his main objection to the evangelical theologians is that they left no room for human agency. Regarding Gods arbitrary grace as the sole source of redemption, they denied any possibility of achieving it through a life of good works. The fate of all individuals was predetermined, and there was no certain way of knowing if one was saved. For Simpson, this was an absolutist, cruel, despair-producing, humanity-belittling, merit-denying, determinist account of salvation, and only through its rejection could liberalism come into its own.

To make his case, Simpson devotes the great bulk of his book to describing what he sees as the five key features of the Calvinist Protestantism that stood in the way of a liberal outcome: despair, hypocrisy, iconoclasm, distrust of performative speech, and biblical literalism. He chooses to demonstrate their regrettable human consequences by drawing most of his evidence from the imaginative literature of the day. Milton, in particular, gets a disproportionate amount of space, presumably because his writings pose the problem of how the poet, born into a culture of Calvinist predestination, came to express proto-liberal sentiments. But as examples of despair and the vicious psychic torture of not knowing whether or not one was saved, Simpson also cites Thomas Wyatts Paraphrase of the Penitential Psalms and John Bunyans The Pilgrims Progress. He comments on the Kafkaesquequality of this theological world, in which despair is simultaneously the surest sign both of election and of damnation.

To illustrate Protestant hypocrisy, Simpson turns to Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Ben Jonsons Bartholomew Fair and the Puritan Angelo in William Shakespeares Measure for Measure, two obvious examples of the duplicity generated by the Puritan tendency to prescribe humanly impossible standards of godliness. To capture Calvinist iconoclasm, which moved from the destruction of images in churches to proposals that the churches themselves be destroyed and finally to a psychic iconoclasm against incorrect imaginings, Simpson cites Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, which portrays mental images as much worse than physical ones.

Next on Simpsons list of evangelical horrors is the Calvinist attack on performative language, by which he means the attempt to achieve physical effects by words, whether in the ritual of the Catholic Mass or in the curses of supposed witches. He accuses the reformers of inventing (or, alternatively, reinventing) the idea of black magica bizarre suggestion, since witch trials were well underway in 15th century Europe: As Simpson himself recognizes, Malleus Maleficarum, the notorious treatise providing the rationale for such prosecutions, appeared in 1487 and was the work of a papal inquisitor. He also examines the Calvinist attacks on the theater, culminating in the parliamentary ordinance of 1648 abolishing stage plays. In his desire to give that act an exclusively religious explanation, however, Simpson omits its stress on the disorders and disturbance of the peace with which the theaters were associated. Instead he cites Miltons virtuous terrorist Samson, who pulls down a theater and kills the audience, though he does not remind us that Samson Agonistes was itself a play or that the poets original idea was to make Paradise Lost one, too.

Simpsons final theme is the dominance of biblical literalism in evangelical culture. Every aspect of Church doctrine, governance and practice, he points out, was potentially vulnerable to being rejected as idolatrous if it did not find justification in a set of texts at least 1,400 years old. The literal reading of such biblical texts as There is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10) could, he claims, make scriptural reading an experience of existential anguish. He cites the paraphrases of Psalms by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, betrayed by his friends and despairingly awaiting execution in 1547, and Bunyans spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding (1666), which suggests that the authors persecution by the authorities paled to nothing when compared with the way that the biblical text persecuted him as a reader. Returning to his favorite analogy, Simpson remarks that we must look to Kafka to find anything remotely comparable.

Throughout his account of Calvinism and its discontents, Simpsons sympathies lie with the eras anti-literalists, notably Shakespeare, whose Shylock, insisting on the letter of his bond, resembles less the Jews than the Puritan divines in their eager readiness to inflict the arbitrary, inhuman literal sense on their fellow Christians. He admires Milton as another anti-literalist who invoked intention and context in order to produce a self-interested, nonliteral reinterpretation of Christs pronouncement on divorce and whose Paradise Lost bears only the most skeletal relationship to the words of Genesis.

Simpsons study of English Calvinism leaves the reader with a deeply depressing and somewhat overheated view of evangelical religion in the period, which he calls a state-sponsored cultural extremity of a singular, soul-crushing and violence-producing kind. If he had gone beyond his chosen literary sources, he could easily have matched his examples of despairing evangelicals with an equal or perhaps even larger list of readers who claimed to have derived real comfort from the Scriptures. Personal temperament did as much as religious allegiance to determine whether an individual emerged from reading the Bible cheered or depressed. He concedes as much when he remarks that Bunyan clearly manifests the symptoms of chronic depression. Simpson would also have found that many ordinary Protestant clergy were surprisingly tolerant of their unregenerate parishioners belief that they could earn salvation by their own efforts.

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Despite what he sees as its horrors, Simpson concludes that Calvinist theology was by far the most powerful expression of early European revolutionary modernity. It paralleled the administrative centralization carried out by Tudor monarchs by portraying God as invested with massively concentrated executive powers at the center of a purified, utterly homogeneous True Church of the Elect. In due course, the unsustainable violence of the Calvinist revolution produced the great counter narrative of modernity, namely the decentralization of theological and political power and the shift to a more liberal order.

Permanent Revolution is a rich work, abounding in challenging assertions and acute aperus, but at times it is also an infuriating one to read. Simpsons sentences can be convoluted; he employs arcane neologisms like dramicide and is capable of making statements like liberal modernity retrojected its abject onto premodernity. His text is marred by repetitions, careless proofreading, and some embarrassing factual errors. Yet he is extremely well read in modern historical writing as well as early modern literature, and his argument is punctuated by many original insights.

At the end of the book, Simpson returns to his opening theme of the liberal tradition, its origins, and its future. Here he encounters an obvious problem: No one in the 17th century gave the word liberal a political meaning, and the concept of liberalism as a political ideology did not appear until the second decade of the 19th century. So the early modern liberalism of Simpsons book is liberalism avant la lettre. When the concept did appear in the early 19th century, it was rapidly appropriated by politicians of very different hues, as historian Helena Rosenblatt brilliantly demonstrated in her 2018 The Lost History of Liberalism. Yet Simpson uses the word unselfconsciously, as if this notoriously elusive term had only one meaning. Writing as a committed liberal, he defines the tenets of modern liberalism as he sees them. They include the separation of church and state, equality before the law, toleration for minorities, freedom of association, liberty and privacy of conscience, and acceptance of the democratic judgment of the majority. (He does not say whether in the American context this means a majority of voters or a majority of states.) But this is essentially a version of what political philosophers call classical liberalism, the kind inaugurated by John Locke.

Simpson does not seem to recognize that liberalism since the 1680s has taken many different forms, according to who or what is perceived as libertys enemy, and therefore cannot be so narrowly defined. There is the economic liberalism of Adam Smith, whose attack on protectionist legislation and belief in the efficacy of the free market has been resurrected in modern times in an exaggerated form by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and there are the new liberals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who drew inspiration from John Stuart Mill, T.H. Green, and L.T. Hobhouse and whose central aim was to diminish the social and economic constraints on the personal freedom of the population at large by having the state intervene in the market. In the United States today, all the major political groupings, from Republicans to communitarians, make an appeal to liberty, though they give it very different meanings.

Although Simpson recognizes the slipperiness of the concept, he sticks to his own ahistorical definition of liberalism. His final verdict is that liberalism is an essential guardian of our freedom but that it is currently in global retreat before evangelical religionno longer Protestant this time but manifested in the rise of populist religious forces in India, Algeria, Israel, and Turkey. Liberalism, he warns, has serious weaknesses. It can be ineffective, as in the United States, the land of the free but also the nation with by far the worlds highest gross and per capita prison population. Like the Puritan elect, liberals can be intolerant, virtue-parading, exclusivist, and identitarian. They, too, are subject to the logic of permanent revolution, for there is always a new cause that directs their energies away from the classical liberalism that Simpson regards as their core commitment.

However, liberals greatest mistake, he insists, is to regard liberalism as a worldview that, like Christianity or Marxism, can offer a guide to salvation. In his opinion, liberalism is merely a second-order belief system, designed to preserve a plurality of worldviews by reminding their holders of the constitutional proprieties they should observe when pursuing their goals. Just as early Protestantism caused so much pain by extending its all-embracing tentacles into domains unconnected with spirituality, so liberalism exceeds its brief when it attempts to reshape the world on what Simpson describes as the shallow grounds of abstract, universalist human rights as a set of absolute virtues, and he sees it as particularly odious in its more recent, militantly secularist form.

Implicit in this argument seems to be the notion that, provided all the worlds different cultures and religions tolerate minorities and observe democratic constraints, they should be respected, however much their cultural practices might pose threats to liberal values. This would not have persuaded the late philosopher Richard Rorty, who held that some cultures, like some people, are no damn good: they cause too much pain and so have to be resisted. Which of these views, one wonders, is the more liberal one?

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Does Liberalism Have Its Roots in the Illiberal Upheavals of the English Reformation? - The Nation

Lets start with a definition for each of these terms. Liberal means open to new behaviors or opinions and willing to discard traditional values. Progressives are known for favoring or implementing social reform or new liberal ideas. Conservatives hold onto traditional attitudes and values and are cautious about change.

Many in the United States have used these terms to denigrate people who they disagree with politically and socially. Yet we may find ourselves agreeing with parts of both viewpoints. For instance, you may be very conservative with your spending and liberal with your social beliefs. I personally know people I consider friends who are very conservative with their political beliefs but have accepted many liberal actions from the past. I also know people I consider friends who are very liberal with their social beliefs but are very conservative economically.

When we use history to study liberalism/progressivism and conservatism, we may see some hypocrisy in all of us. If you have or had a daughter who participated in high school sports, you really need to thank a liberal/progressive who pushed for this in the early 70s. If you appreciate women voting, you need to thank a liberal/progressive who pushed for womens suffrage over a hundred years ago. If you agree that children should be in school and not the work place, you need to give recognition to liberal/progressives. If you have taken your family to a national park, you need to thank liberal/progressives. If you believe that companies who prepare food products are liable for what they put in the product, thank liberal/progressives. If you believe corporations should not pollute our water, thank liberal/progressives.

If you believe traditional family structures have been a positive for society, you agree with conservatives. If you believe that individuals should take responsibility for their actions, you agree with conservatives. If you partake in traditional holidays, you agree with conservatives. If you believe the Constitution of the United States provides an ideal which we can follow, you agree with conservatives.

So, some liberals follow conservative practices and some conservatives accept the changes liberals have brought to the country. Can we really just be solely a liberal or solely a conservative when both sides have made contributions to the history of the United States.

The anger many individuals have toward others who hold differences of opinions is misplaced. To use the terms liberal and conservative as a means to belittle and demean others demonstrates ignorance of historical content and, more importantly, a blatant lack of respect for others.

I am a progressive. I cannot imagine that we cannot do better politically, economically and socially. As a progressive I have no business telling others how to pray, who to marry, or what to do with their money. It is not in my character to judge another human being. I would leave all the judging to the greatest progressive leader who changed the world over 2,000 years ago by teaching love, acceptance and sharing.

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Letter: We owe a debt of gratitude to liberals, progressives and conservatives - INFORUM